Beiersdorf Stock

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2026 conference call. I'm here with our CEO, Vincent Warnery; and our CFO, Astrid Hermann. As always, we will start with a presentation of the quarterly results, followed by a Q&A session. And with that, over to you, Vincent.

Thank you, Christopher, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. As expected, we completed the third quarter with an improved performance compared to the first half of the year across our entire consumer business. Our Derma business with Eucerin and Aquaphor once again outperformed the market. The expansion of Aquaphor into body care contributed to the strong growth trajectory. And Eucerin reached another important innovation milestone with the launch of our breakthrough solution for acne-prone skin. Our luxury business with La Prairie and Chantecaille also accelerated in the third quarter. La Prairie gained further momentum with China remaining the key growth driver. In addition, Chantecaille delivered double-digit growth.

For NIVEA, our 18-month turnaround plan is progressing. Key launches such as FACE+ in Europe are off to a good start and the continued growth of NIVEA sell-out is further evidence that we are on the right track. Our third quarter performance reflects the strength of our business but also the continued challenges around NIVEA. NIVEA net sales declined by 4.9% organically. While net sales dynamics improved compared to the second quarter, several sell-in headwinds continue to weigh on performance. In addition, NIVEA's third quarter performance was affected by a commercial dispute involving our Russian subsidiary and a local business partner in Russia. The dispute has been resolved and proceedings have been settled. Normal business operations have resumed.

With our H1 results, we announced a more comprehensive turnaround plan for NIVEA to restore sustainable growth. I will update you on the actions already underway later in the presentation. Our Derma business accelerated to double-digit organic sales growth of plus 10.6%. Growth was broad-based across regions and categories, supported by the rollout of breakthrough innovations and expansion into white spaces. Healthcare continued its positive trajectory with organic sales growth of plus 5.7%, supported by innovation in Wound Care. La Prairie gained further momentum, delivering organic growth of plus 8.5% in the third quarter. Overall, our Consumer business declined by 0.7% organically in the third quarter. Excluding Russia, Consumer delivered organic sales growth of plus 0.6%. As highlighted in our H1 call, tesa performance was affected by the semiconductor shortages impacting our electronics business.

This resulted in an organic sales decline of 4.3% in the third quarter. At group level, this translates into an organic sales decline of 1.3% in the third quarter. Let's now look at the performance by brand in more detail, starting with our Derma business. Derma, Eucerin and Aquaphor delivered double-digit organic sales growth in the third quarter on top of a tough comparison base in the prior year. Over the first 9 months, the business grew by plus 8.7%. Consumers continue to look for efficacy, scientific credibility and dermatologist endorsements playing directly to our strengths. What gives us confidence is that Derma's growth is not driven by only one market or innovation. We continue to see strong growth across regions and categories, supported by our expansion into white spaces and the rollout of breakthrough innovations.

In North America, Aquaphor Body, the largest U.S. launch in the brand's history, is off to a strong start and significantly expands the brand's potential beyond its traditional categories. In Latin America, Mexico and Brazil continue to drive growth. In Europe, a strong sun season as well as Thiamidol line extensions in body care supported organic growth of plus 8%. And across the AAA region, Eucerin continued to deliver double-digit growth of plus 25%, with particularly strong performance in Thailand and China. During my recent visit in China, where Eucerin is a leading anti-pigmentation brand, I saw firsthand how Thiamidol is bringing our deep skin care expertise to consumers around the world. With Thiamidol now also registered in Korea, we are opening up further opportunities in one of the world's most innovative skin care markets.

In July, Aquaphor launched into body lotions and creams, thereby substantially expanding its growth potential in the category that represents 80% of the U.S. body care market. The launch is off to a very strong start. Within 6 weeks after launch, Aquaphor already secured the #3 position in the U.S. therapeutic skin care market and the #1 Derma body care position in the drugstore channel. The launch was supported by strong activation with leading U.S. retailers. In addition, feedback from dermatologists has been very positive. As a result, Aquaphor accelerated to an organic sales growth of plus 13% in the third quarter.

The launch of Eucerin DERMOPURE CLINICAL PROBIOM8 is another strong example of how we turn our scientific expertise into clinically proven skin care solutions. At the heart of this breakthrough innovation is our patented active ingredient TopiC.A, which takes a new approach to acne-prone skin by helping to balance the skin microbiome. It builds on more than 20 years of microbiome research and the expertise gained through our acquisition of S-Biomedic. Feedback from dermatologists and consumers has been overwhelmingly positive. At EADV, Europe's leading dermatology congress, more than 1,400 health care professionals joined the largest scientific symposium in EADV's history to discuss the science behind this innovation.

PROBIOM8 was launched in September across its first markets in Europe, Mexico and Thailand, opening new growth opportunities for Eucerin in one of the world's largest skin care categories. Let's continue with our luxury brand, La Prairie. After temporary retail disruptions earlier in the year, the brand returned to growth in Q2 and accelerated further in the third quarter, delivering strong organic sales growth of plus 8.5%. La Prairie's recent performance is a result of the strategic repositioning measures implemented over the last 2 years, which are paying off. China remained La Prairie's key growth driver with net sales up plus 28% in the third quarter and strong sell-out growth. Both outstanding e-commerce and impressive brick-and-mortar performance contributed to these results. Winning luxury skin care, especially in China, requires differentiated technology and science-based innovation, which plays directly to our strengths. Our ability to succeed in such an environment is demonstrated by the exceptionally strong performance of our White Caviar line, a key growth contributor in China.

Based on our hero ingredient Thiamidol, White Caviar is the #1 luxury brightening collection in China. We have also made good progress in expanding La Prairie's price range. In September, we launched our new entry line Swiss Pristine, combining our scientific expertise with advanced biotechnology. The launch enables us to attract a new generation of consumers and selectively expand our distribution. The launch was accompanied by strong digital influence and retail activations across regions. Initial results are strong. Swiss Pristine is accelerating client recruitment, reaching significantly younger consumers and generating strong early demand across regions. At the same time, we are seeing increased engagement from existing clients and encouraging cross-selling into our core franchises, reinforcing its potential as an entry line into a broader La Prairie portfolio.

Now let's turn to NIVEA. Net sales declined by 4.9% organically in the third quarter. Excluding Russia, NIVEA sales declined by 3.2% organically in the third quarter. While net sales dynamics improved compared to the second quarter, temporary selling headwinds continue to weigh on performance. Retailer disputes continued to negatively affect the third quarter, but have now been largely resolved with only a few remaining that will impact Q4. Q3 also continued to be impacted by phasing and destocking. While the fourth quarter will still be impacted, we expect this effect to gradually fade, leaving us with healthy stock level by the end of the year.

NIVEA sell-out continued to grow globally in the third quarter, an early evidence that our rebalancing measures are starting to be effective. At the same time, our sell-out growth remains below market, which is why we started implementing the second phase of our rebalancing, a comprehensive turnaround plan for '26 and '27. Let me remind you of key pillars of our turnaround plan before highlighting some of the actions that are already underway. First, we are unlocking the full growth potential of NIVEA and size portfolio across all categories. We are accelerating our innovation pipeline to respond faster to changing consumer needs and market trends. Second, we are reinforcing NIVEA accessibility and value for money propositions to drive penetration and volume.

Third, we are fully leveraging NIVEA's local relevance. While NIVEA remains a global brand, we are increasing our ability to respond to local consumer needs and market dynamics. This is already reflected in our innovation pipeline with a stronger focus on local insights and proven regional franchises. Fourth, we are stepping up consumer-facing investments and focusing our resources on where they can have the greatest impact. Let me now show you how we are putting these priorities into action. One example is the launch of FACE+ in Europe. Building on the success of Facial in emerging markets, we are bringing this proven consumer relevant concept to Europe as FACE+ adapted to local needs.

This is where we can leverage NIVEA's robust strength and our fast-track approach to innovation, listening closely to local consumers, learning from what works in individual markets and scaling the strongest ideas across regions. With currently 4 SKUs, FACE+ delivers well-known ingredients such as vitamin C, niacinamide, panthenol and hyaluronic acid at an affordable price point of between EUR 5 and EUR 6. Early traction is very positive, particularly in recruiting new consumers to NIVEA. And while the initial launch focuses on moisturizing creams, our ambition is to build FACE+ into a broader Face Care franchise over time. Another example is the launch of our Sweet Treat Shower & Deo Limited Edition in Europe with Germany as a focused market. Designed to engage young consumers and drive penetration, the range adds fragrance-led experiences to our core portfolio and responds directly to emerging consumer preferences.

In Germany, we are supporting the launch with a fully digital media campaign and strong consumer activations with very encouraging initial consumer and market feedback. India is already a strong market for NIVEA with continued double-digit growth and penetration gain. Over the last 12 months, we have added 10 million new consumers to the brand. Our ambition is to accelerate penetration through locally relevant innovation. One example is the expansion of NIVEA Soft into the fast-growing gel moisturizer segment. The new serum infused gel is tailored to local demand for lightweight, non-sticky hydration while adding skin care benefits through hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and vitamin C. Supported by flexible formats and integrated media and influencer activation, the launch is designed to drive trial, recruit new consumers and accelerate NIVEA's growth in India.

We are also stepping up consumer-facing investments and focusing our resources on where they can have the greatest impact. Looking ahead, our recently signed 5-year partnership with Tour de France is a strong example. Starting in 2027, NIVEA SUN will become a partner of one of the world's best-known sporting events, giving us a major platform to connect with consumers across Europe.

Astrid will now give an overview on tesa, our performance by segment and region as well as the outlook for the rest of the year. Over to you, Astrid.

Thank you, Vincent. Tesa recorded an organic sales decline of 4.3% in the third quarter and 2.1% in the first 9 months of the year, reflecting the soft performance of the electronics business. As outlined in our half year call, the market environment became increasingly challenging, particularly in Asia. Ongoing chip shortages have impacted production volumes across the consumer electronics industry and led to lower demand from key customers. In addition, we faced a particularly strong comparison base in electronics in the third quarter. As a result, the segment remained below the prior year level and more than offset the positive development across the rest of the portfolio.

The decline in Electronics also weighed on profitability given that electronics is one of tesa's higher-margin business areas. Excluding Electronics, tesa delivered low single-digit growth in both Q3 and year-to-date. The broader industry portfolio outside electronics developed well. Electrical Systems continued its strong momentum, supported by project ramp-ups and new customer wins across regions. Automotive delivered a strong performance, accelerating in Q3, outperforming underlying industry trends and benefiting from new business wins in electric vehicles. Print and Packaging Solutions as well as Industrial Trade and converting also contributed positively, supported by project-driven growth.

The Consumer business remained below the prior year level, reflecting softer demand outside of Europe. The European business recovered over the course of the year, supported by continued momentum in e-commerce. Let me now walk you through some further details of our sales performance in Q3 and the first 9 months of the year. Beiersdorf Consumer business generated net sales of EUR 1.94 billion in the third quarter of 2026 with an organic sales decline of 0.7%, representing a slight improvement compared to the first half of the year. Due to favorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales increased by 1.0%. Year-to-date, Consumer generated net sales of EUR 6.052 billion with an organic sales decline of 2.9%, while nominal sales declined by 3.2%.

Our tesa business recorded an organic net sales decline of 4.3% in the third quarter of 2026, closing the quarter with net sales of EUR 422 million. Due to favorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales declined by 2.0%. As previously explained, sales development in the quarter was significantly impacted by the semiconductor shortage. Year-to-date, tesa generated net sales of EUR 1.262 billion at an organic and nominal sales decline of 2.1%. As a result, the group generated net sales of EUR 2.362 billion in the third quarter of 2026 at an organic sales decline of 1.3%. Due to favorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales increased by 0.4%.

Year-to-date, the group generated net sales of EUR 7.314 billion. Organic sales declined by 2.8%, while nominal sales declined by 3.0%. Looking at our consumer business across regions. While the consumer net sales development continued to be impacted by NIVEA's softer performance in the first 9 months of the year, the business showed a sequential improvement in the third quarter. At the same time, other parts of the portfolio continued to perform strongly, particularly our Derma brands and La Prairie. North America returned to mid-single-digit growth in the third quarter, driven by continued strength in Derma, particularly due to the Aquaphor body launch. Coppertone continued to weigh on the region's overall performance.

Latin America also returned to low single-digit growth in the third quarter, benefiting from an improving NIVEA performance in Brazil and continued strong momentum in Derma, particularly in Brazil and Mexico. The crisis in the Middle East continued to weigh on Africa, Asia and Australia region. However, this impact was more than offset by continued strong growth in China, India and Thailand. Western Europe continued to decline, however, at a slower rate compared to the first half of the year, benefiting from Sun Care as well as the resolution of some customer conflicts that had affected NIVEA. Lastly, our net sales in Eastern Europe declined by 14.6%. A key factor behind this development was our remaining business in Russia, which is reported in our Eastern Europe region. Excluding Russia, net sales in Eastern Europe declined by 1.3% in the third quarter, representing a significant improvement compared to the first half of the year.

Now let us turn to our outlook for the rest of the year. Consumer delivered an improvement in the third quarter compared to the first half of the year. Derma continued its strong performance, while La Prairie accelerated its growth. NIVEA remains challenging, but we are seeing encouraging early signs from the turnaround plan. Taking into account an organic net sales decline of 2.9% for Consumer year-to-date and a tougher prior year comparable in the fourth quarter, we continue to expect a low single-digit organic decline in net sales for the full year. We expect the consumer EBIT margin, excluding special factors of at least 11.0%. For tesa, we continue to expect net sales to remain flat to slightly growing organically and an EBIT margin, excluding special factors, slightly below the prior year's level.

As pointed out, however, the semiconductor shortage may further negatively impact tesa's performance. Due to the corresponding negative mix effect on profitability, it also creates a risk to tesa, tesa's EBIT margin for the full year. At group level, we continue our guidance for a low single-digit organic sales decline and an EBIT margin, excluding special factors of at least 11.8%.

And with that, we are happy to answer your questions. Over to you, Christopher, for the Q&A.

Thank you, Astrid. Let's start with the Q&A. Please note that we have a maximum 2 per caller. And the first question comes from Jeremy Fialko from HSBC.

So perhaps you could just talk a bit more about the NIVEA performance in the quarter, maybe a bit more detail on what the sell-out was? And just if you could break down some of the sort of technical factors that led to the sell-in being below that? And then secondly, maybe you could talk about a bit more in detail about your consumer expectations for Q4 and what you think the prospects of that getting back into positive territory are?

Jeremy, on NIVEA, so as we said, we are experiencing -- we had the complexity with Russia, so which has impacted strongly our sell-in. Now as I said, we are out of that. We are back to normal business. What we see clearly is an improvement of the sell-out. We are growing in sell-out. We are not yet gaining market share, which means we are not yet growing in line with the market, but we are overall growing with some very good results in emerging markets where we are gaining market share over the last 3 months, which is a pretty good news. In Europe, we are still struggling because of some consumer customer conflict, which are almost over now, but which impacted Q3.

So all in all, we are getting closer to having the same level of sell-in and sell-out. We are destocking also in order to finish the year, and that was your second question, with a strong in sell-out with very healthy stocks in each and every country being able to attack to embark into a much better 2027.

And the next question comes from Celine Pannuti of JPMorgan.

Sorry I just want to come back on some of the key points you mentioned on Europe. So first of all, on Russia, is this ongoing? Do we still expect Eastern Europe to be down massively in the coming quarters? Or did you say you resolved it? And then on Europe, can you talk about your sell-out data? I mean, I presume there was a benefit from Sun Care in the summer. But if you look at the maybe last 6 weeks, how do you feel the sell-out has improved? And yes, just trying to understand how much of a destock impact we should expect for Europe and disconnect between sell-in and sell-out in the fourth quarter?

So, thank you Celine, for your question. On the first question, Russia, we are absolutely back to business. So we had a commercial issue with our manufacturer in Russia. We have solved this issue, and we are back to business. So Q4 will be a normal business for Russia, and we go back to what we have been doing over the last years. It means also that overall, the Eastern Europe is positive, will be positive. We are seeing a strong improvement in Eastern Europe. As we said, we are almost flat in Q3 in Eastern Europe, excluding Russia. We are gaining market share on both NIVEA and Eucerin. So we are expecting a good quarter in Q4 in Eastern Europe.

In Western Europe, this is where obviously we struggle with some customer conflict. Those consumer conflicts are almost all solved. We still have one remaining issue that should be solved. We had, in fact, the sell-out, which is slightly positive. I think over the last -- the first months of 2026 and year-to-date, August, -- we are growing at around plus 1%, which is not yet at the level of the market, which is much better than what we experienced in last year. We gained indeed market share in Sun Care. We are by far the best performing global brand in Sun Care. We grew 6% the sell-out. We are back to growth also in deodorants, where we are struggling more is Face Care, and this is why the launch of FACE+ that just started a few weeks ago is a good news.

So I'm expecting also better news in sell-out in Europe. So all in all, Q4 in Europe, which should be better having solved the issue with retailers, having solved the problem with Russia and having also reduced strongly the level of stocks that was coming from the launch we did last year in the Q4 2025.

Can I just ask a follow-up? So super helpful what you just said on Europe and Eastern Europe. I know that Q4 has a tougher comp on the rest of the world. So net-net, do you expect Q4 to be at the same level or even better than Q3 at a group level for consumer?

You've seen that we are maintaining the guidance. So which means that we should have a Q4, which should be slightly negative, still impacted by some customer conflict, but even more by the fact that we want absolutely to finish the year with healthy stocks on each and every product category in each and every country. So we have also to -- as you remember, the Q4 '25 was strongly impacted by the launches of Derma Control and Epicelline -- that will not happen again. So all in all, slightly negative quarter at the sell-out, which should be even better than what we have seen year-to-date August.

And the next question comes from Guillaume Delmas of UBS.

A couple of questions for me, please. The first one is on the tesa guidance because based on the first 9 months performance, I mean, the guidance seems to require a very meaningful acceleration in the fourth quarter. I mean I'm getting to 7% plus organic sales growth in Q4 to get to flat for the year. So my question here is, what visibility do you have on this potential shortage of semiconductors in the last 2 months of the year? And in a scenario whereby electronics would remain a drag as in they would not improve relative to Q3 would tesa remain negative in the fourth quarter?

And then my second question is a question on gross margin. I mean mostly about the back half of '26 and maybe early days, but also on '27 because we are seeing a continued increase in commodity costs and logistics costs. And at the same time, you're making it very clear you're trying to reinforce NIVEA's value for money proposition, which correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to signal limited to very modest pricing actions going forward for NIVEA. So question here is, I mean, would it be fair to assume that gross margin is likely to decline over the next 18 months? Or are there some levers you've identified that could help you maintain your gross margin at current levels?

Guillaume, I will take both of your questions. Related to the tesa guidance. So we have had quite different quarters in the prior year. So comparison is quite different in the fourth quarter with much, much lower electronics business in the prior year and therefore, a much easier comparison than, for example, in the third quarter of this year. So it's just not an apples-for-apples comparison. And we are seeing, again, the remainder of business, excluding electronics, really accelerating a very, very good performance, and that's going to also contribute in the fourth quarter.

And on top of that, while we do not expect the shortage to meaningfully ease, again, we do see that we will still have some electronics business and that should be less of a drag on the fourth quarter impact. That said, I do want to highlight, and obviously, this is why we've also spoken about a risk. There is a lot of uncertainty, and it's a bit difficult completely to have complete visibility of what's to happen in the months to come. We're obviously, again, working on certain scenarios and expectations from orders from our customers. On your gross margin question, we have talked about the fact that both the rebalancing in NIVEA is obviously putting some pressure on our gross margin.

We are investing more in consumer-facing for NIVEA and beyond that, obviously, the rebalancing, less Face Care, more personal care is obviously having an impact here as well. And the back half will be similar. There will be pressure on gross margin downwards. And into next year, similarly, obviously, less of an impact because we are already making significant changes this year, and we should start to be able to benefit, obviously, from some positive mix impact by our Derma business and our La Prairie luxury business growing stronger.

The next question comes from Karel Zoete at Kepler.

I have 2 questions. Maybe a follow-up one on -- in relation to pricing. Can you share what's been the volume component in the third quarter, but also how you think about pricing going into next year? What kind of price increases do you require to protect gross margins? And particularly, of course, the situation in Europe is interesting. And the second thing is I noticed that on the slides, you mentioned quite frequently growth rates, excluding Russia. Are you now considering to exit your Russian business? Or is that something you'd like to hold on to for the time being?

Thank you, Karel, for your question. I will take both of them. If you look at the performance of the quarter -- the third quarter, it's clearly there is no price effect. Most of the growth or the decline is volume. Next year, we are coming with an extremely, extremely reasonable pricing policy. We are not willing to increase price because clearly, the value for money positioning of NIVEA is essential. This is why we are betting on the fact, as Astrid said, that we are delivering more units and that we'll be able to compensate the increased cost of goods by more units in our factories.

So clearly, minimizing any kind of price impact will have price discussion and price impact on our consumers next year. On Russia, no, we are in Russia. We stayed in Russia. In 2022, we said that we will exit La Prairie and tesa. We did it. We said that we'll reduce our assortment by 65%. We did it. And we said that we'll not do any advertising. We did it. We are still in the same strategy in the same mindset. We are there to stay in Russia with our brand, protecting the brand, paying the salary of our people, but there is no change in our strategy regarding Russia.

And the next question comes from Tilly Eno at Morgan Stanley.

Just on La Prairie, clearly, a very significant acceleration in the quarter. And you obviously mentioned that you launched the entry line SKU in September. Could you just clarify if there's any sell-in benefit related to that entry line launch? And then also on China specifically, you called out 28% growth in La Prairie there. Could you quantify the sell-out in China La Prairie for us?

Swiss Pristine is really a great event for La Prairie. We used to have in the past this kind of entry line, but we stopped it, and we came back with the line. So it's sold between EUR 180 and EUR 300. This is a line which is allowing us to recruit younger consumers. They are, on average, 4 to 10 years younger than the La Prairie consumers. 80% of them are new to the brand. So there are people who were not buying La Prairie before. What is even more interesting is that we can also open new retail channels. For example, we are selling La Prairie on Amazon U.S. since last month. We have also been able to enter Sephora and Bluemercury in Canada with a Swiss Pristine line, something we could not do with a more expensive line.

So clearly an opportunity to enlarge the penetration of the brand and to be sure that we can recruit people who want to deliver -- want to discover La Prairie, but not, of course, at a very high price. In China, we are benefiting from the launch of Swiss Pristine, but also from the success of White Caviar. White Caviar is a franchise we have in China since a long time, but we decided last year to put Thiamidol, our hero ingredient into the franchise, and we became instantly #1 brightening luxury franchise in China. So complementing the strength of the brand, but the true efficacy. So it gave us over the last 6 quarters, we have been growing in sell-out double digit. And it's really a continuous success we are having in China, not only in e-commerce, but also in brick-and-mortar.

And this is why we had this month, this quarter, the best ever performance of La Prairie with a plus 28% in China. So really a combination of more efficacy with our legacy franchises, a younger target group touched by Swiss Pristine and the fact that we are leveraging also not only the department store, which are core to La Prairie, but also e-commerce and also a new distribution channel, which until now we were not selling La Prairie.

And the next question comes from Warren Ackerman at Barclays.

Warren here at Barclays. I've got one housekeeping and 2 questions. The housekeeping is, did you confirm that the NIVEA sell-in, sell-out gap will completely close in Q4? Or do you expect that gap to close at the exit of Q4, if you can just clarify that. And then my main questions are, firstly, Vincent, how are you feeling about the NIVEA reset? Obviously, you went all in on facial skin care. You're now pivoting back to core. What's the organization reaction? Does the organization feel that you can grow the core in categories like deodorants despite the fact that some launches have been below expectations while still capturing some of the opportunity in facial skin care when organizations do like a 180-degree pivot, there's also risks on the other side.

Just interested to understand your kind of more strategic view on that and how the organization feels about that, both good and bad. And then secondly, on the EUR 100 million investment that you're making in H2, now more time has elapsed. Are you able to kind of give a bit more color exactly where that spend is going and the balance of it between in-store activation influencers, local innovation changes, the returns that you expect to see on that? And then how that sort of feeds into kind of next year's margins because I think a few people are still kind of a bit unclear about the cadence of margins H1, H2, just given the kind of size of the investment that you're making.

Thank you for your question. I will take the first one, and Astrid will take the second one on the EUR 100 million consumer-facing investment. On the first one, we will exit the year with sell-in exactly in line with sell-out. That's clearly the commitment and the commitment we have in each and every country. We want to start 1st of Jan 2027 with an extremely healthy situation in terms of stock and being driven by sell-out. So that's why we are coming with a quarter which will still be slightly negative.

I think your question on the NIVEA reset is a very good question. I mean we tried to transform in a way NIVEA into a premium Face Care brand with LUMINOUS and Epicelline. We succeeded to some extent, but it was done at the expense of the other categories. This is why we are coming back to something which is much larger. We are not only focusing on Face Care is still the #1 priority, but we are clearly seeing the other categories and an opportunity to improve penetration. I was giving the example of the shower which is one of the best product in terms of penetration in countries like Germany. We are also acknowledging the fact that our consumers are really attached to the value for money positioning of the brand. This is why I'm extremely happy with the success of FACE+ to see FACE+ able to recruit 80% of people who have not used NIVEA Face product in the last 12 months is something remarkable.

The fact that we are also taking away market share from private label is something that we didn't have in the past. So value for money is essential. And last but not least, also this acknowledging also the fact that NIVEA has not been built in the same way in each and every country that in some countries, we are more body/deo brand in other countries, we are clearly stronger in Face Care. So we acknowledge also the fact that there is not one single NIVEA identity across the world, and that's something which we respect and FACE+ is a good example. How is the organization reacting very positively in the sense that nobody is regret that we tried to really push the Thiamidol and the Epicelline option strongly because there was an opportunity that has made the success of Eucerin and was really -- would have been a pity not to try. But I think everybody is very comfortable with this rebalancing, which is leveraging also local talent.

I was showing the example of the Tour de France, which is coming from a strong recommendation from the French GM and also many other things we have done in the country. So overall, an opportunity to try new things to be bolder, to also accept the idea that some things will work, some things will not work, so more agility. And I think the recent good news, the recent green shoots we see in many different countries is giving us some hope that we have found our way more to do. We have still some work to do, but we have found our way to make NIVEA growing again.

On your question related to the incremental spend, about 1/3 has gone to in-store, the remainder primarily into digital marketing, including, of course, influencer marketing as well, particularly with some of the launches we discussed FACE+ and so on. The spend really started towards the end of the third quarter as we were also launching some of these initiatives, and we should see quite a bit of the spend also in this quarter. In terms of next year, it will be a different pattern in that, obviously, early this year, we were still spending behind some of the innovation from the prior year. That's going to look obviously quite different and much more aligned with the new picture of rebalancing to really now support all these initiatives we spoke about.

The next question comes from Tom Sykes at Deutsche Bank.

Just firstly, on your comments on price, into next year. You obviously also take the view that you're looking to grow volumes to grow your sales next year, and that's going to be the main driver. So do you think about pricing next year as an absolute price and the value which you're going to get from that and your perception of what that's going to lead into in terms of volume? Or are you looking at relative pricing against your peers? And do you have any feeling for where that relative pricing dynamic is going to be next year through your retailer discussions and how they're negotiating with others because -- it does feel like you're kind of going to be perhaps moving that bar on price depending on where others may come out.

Just any views on that. And then just on La Prairie, you've obviously seen an improvement. How much of that improvement would have come through FX? I think you sell in U.S. dollars in part and then you're calculating some of the travel retail obviously in euros. So would you be able to give the benefit of that FX to the organic growth of La Prairie at all, please?

The first question and Astrid will tell you about the FX. On your first question, you're absolutely right to mention that the pricing has 2 dimensions. This is the negotiations with retailers, which is always complicated, particularly in Europe and also the consumer, the effect on consumer prices. On the first one, obviously, we are trying to minimize any disruption next year. This is why also some of the deals we have made this year are covering also next year, which is a good news.

So we are not -- we are clearly willing to minimize this aspect. On the consumer, as you know, our competitors are not the usual suspects. We are not losing market share against the other big companies that you are following. We are losing market share against local brands, against Korean brands, local private labels, which are cheaper than us. So it is true that every additional cents, every additional euro consumer price is impacted the value for money positioning of NIVEA. This is why we are extremely cautious, and we clearly see the opportunity to do price increase if and only there's a real consumer benefit that we are able to explain, could be a new technology, could be a new claim, could be a new galenic.

So both, I would say, aspects, retailer element and consumer element will be extremely cautiously managed next year. We clearly want to give more products to more consumers. And it means we need to have the support of retailers, and we have also to offer product at the right price. On your second question?

Yes, Tom. So in La Prairie, year-to-date, the impact from the U.S. dollar has actually been negative a couple of points. Only in the third quarter, it started to obviously move into positive territory. It's about a 1% point improvement.

And the next question is from Cian Muenster at Reuters.

Yes. Two questions for you. First, a general one. What are your observations in terms of customer demand? Do you see customers preferring cheaper options over premium products? And the second question about the Middle East. So are elevated oil prices and the supply chain disruptions in the Middle East still creating operational challenges with costs and deliveries?

The first question, the second one. In fact, the very complicated or interesting phenomenon in the market is that you have both. You have indeed, particularly in mass market, consumer willing to have, I would not say cheaper, but really value for money proposals. And this is why NIVEA has to fight, and we have to maintain what has always been a key dynamic of NIVEA. We are a value for money brand. But in other channels, and for example, drugstore, pharmacies, perfumery department store, you have clearly premium skin care developing, but a premium skin care, which is supported by the strong scientific efficacy.

This is why we are doing extremely well with Eucerin, and we've been able really to transform Eucerin into an extremely strong Derma brand combining the R&D expertise of Beiersdorf and the equity of Eucerin towards dermatologists. But also more recently with La Prairie, able to sell products, not only at between EUR 180 and EUR 300 like Swiss Pristine, but also around EUR 2,000 for the core franchises of La Prairie. So we have to manage both. We have clearly to have a differentiated approach between NIVEA, which is clearly value for money and La Prairie, Eucerin, Aquaphor and Chantecaille, where we are clearly offering consumers products which are more into this premium skin care category.

The good news that we have the tools to do that. We have not only the scientific expertise of Beiersdorf, but also we have been able over the last years to develop strongly the equity of the brands, and they can support these premium prices. And this is why we are coming with pretty good results, especially in the third quarter.

In terms of your question related to the Middle East, I would certainly suggest that it's caused quite a bit of headache to our teams, particularly in the supply chain. But I would say, first of all, that we are not seeing significant impacts in terms of disruption of our supply chains. We have found ways around them. This has led though to the most immediate impact being higher logistics costs for sure. In terms of the remainder impact from higher oil price, we have so far been able to manage that quite well. I have to say, but obviously, an oil price at above $100 for a longer period of time could cause obviously significant pressure upwards in terms of our cost. But so far, that's been managed quite well by our teams.

And the next question comes from Ulrike Dauer at Dow Jones.

Two small questions in terms of the U.S. import tax, I haven't heard anything whether there was a net-net effect maybe a tax receipt or a tax burden in the 3Q figures. And another question on Russia. Correct me if I'm wrong, Beiersdorf doesn't have any own production in Russia. It's just the import as far as I understand. And the reason for protecting the brand is the reason for staying in Russia is protecting the brand rights. Is that still up to date? Or what's the reason for staying in Russia at this point?

Ulrike, I'll take your first question. So yes, we have received refunds of all the previously paid tariffs for all of our brands. So that's benefiting our year-to-date P&L for sure. We are obviously paying also tariffs ongoing based on the new tariff environment. So that's happening as well. It's not all in Q3, we even had some of those refunds happening earlier in the year.

Question. We are in Russia...

Can you quantify that a little bit?

It was not a material impact to begin with, Ulrike. We had all along said because a lot of our production, to be honest, for our U.S. business is either happening in the U.S. or in our Mexican site, which is still part of USMCA, we've had a pretty insubstantial impact compared to many others.

Dauer, you're right. We have no factory. We are -- we stayed in Russia to protect the brand. We are in Russia since 1906. We know that if we had left Russia, somebody else would have produced NIVEA without us. So we are there to protect the brand and to pay the salaries of our employees. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thank you. That was the last question. This concludes our conference call. Our Q4 and full year results 2026 will be released after market close on March 1, 2027. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf and look forward to seeing you again in early March. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Beiersdorf H1 Results 2026 Conference Call. I'm Sergen, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christopher Sheldon, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sergen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first half year 2026 conference call. I'm here with our CEO, Vincent Warnery; and our CFO, Astrid Hermann. As always, we will start with the presentation of the results followed by a Q&A session.

And with that, I would like to hand over to Vincent.

Thank you, Christopher, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. Astrid and I will now present an overview of our financial performance in the first half of 2026 and our full year and midterm outlook. We'll also update you on the NIVEA rebalancing strategy and explain the next action steps to return the brand to sustainable growth. The performance of our business in the first half year was impacted by a continued volatile market environment. Consumer sentiment and consumption were affected by geopolitical disruptions, particularly the crisis in the Middle East as well as ongoing economic uncertainty.

Despite these challenges, our Derma business continued its outperformance, delivering high single-digit growth in the first half of the year. The retail disruptions that affected La Prairie in the first months of the year have mostly faded, resulting in improved performance supported by solid underlying fundamentals. NIVEA on the other hand, is still affecting our performance negatively. Our rebalancing strategy has delivered some initial positive effects as we have shifted our marketing budget and focus from premium face care across other major categories.

However, these green shoots remain too isolated to drive NIVEA's growth on a global scale. We have, therefore, initiated the next phase of the rebalancing, a decisive 18 months turnaround plan to restore NIVEA's growth trajectory, supported by the continued strength of our Derma business the improving trajectory of La Prairie and our turnaround plan to restore NIVEA growth, we are laying the foundations for a return to profitable growth from 2028.

The challenging dynamics around NIVEA continued to weigh on the second quarter performance with NIVEA sales declining by 6.7% organically. Our Derma business with Eucerin and Aquaphor continued its multiyear outperformance with 7.4% net sales growth driven by innovation and white space expansion. The Health Care business with our brands, Hansaplast and Elastoplast grew by 6.2% organically, again driven by a strong innovation pipeline. La Prairie returned to net sales growth of 2.2% in the second quarter as the temporary disruptions in the U.S. and Travel Retail in China in the first quarter faded as expected.

In total, our consumer business declined by 3.3% organically in the second quarter. Tesa returned to growth in the second quarter, up 2.5% after a phasing-driven organic net sales decline of 4.3% in the first quarter. This translates into a net sales decline of 2.3% at group level.

Let's now review the performance of our brands in more detail, starting with Derma and our brands, Eucerin and Aquaphor. Over the last 5 years, our Derma business had doubled in size and grew by 7.8% in the first half of 2026. Derma once again significantly outperformed the market in the second quarter, delivering net sales growth of 7.4% despite a demanding comparable base of 13.3% organic growth in the second quarter of 2025. Our success is driven by 2 pillars: breakthrough innovations and white space expansion.

Looking ahead, we'll continue to build on these trends by advancing science-based innovation and capturing additional growth opportunities across categories and markets. The success of our strategy is clearly reflected in our performance across regions. In Brazil, our Derma business delivered an impressive growth rate of 71% in the second quarter. Eucerin has assumed the #3 position and the Epigenetic serum has become the #1 anti-age product in the derma cosmetics market.

In China, we continued to deliver outstanding double-digit growth of 62% in the second quarter. This performance was driven by a focused expansion strategy, strong medical endorsement and continued innovation momentum. Eucerin has become the #1 anti-pigment brand and our hero product, the Thiamidol Spotless brightening serum, maintained its #1 position in China's Derma anti-pigment serum market.

In North America, our biggest derma market, our face care business in the U.S. was a clear growth driver with net sales increasing by 40% organically. Eucerin has become the most recommended brand against hyperpigmentation by American dermatologists. North America and Europe also continued to perform strongly across categories despite a high prior year comparable base.

Now let's turn to Aquaphor. Over the past years, Aquaphor has consistently delivered double-digit growth in North America, driven by the strong performance of its healing ointments, baby healing care franchises. We are now taking the brand to the next level and unlocking a significant white space opportunity. With the launch of body lotions and creams, the brand is entering a category that represents more than 80% of the U.S. body care market, substantially expanding its growth potential beyond ointments.

This is the largest U.S. launch to date and marks an important step in unlocking additional growth opportunities for the brand beyond its traditional categories. With the new daily hydrating range, we are bringing Aquaphor's trusted dermatologic credentials to the daily hydration category and creating a new platform for future growth. The new Body Care range was launched in July with 3 leading retail partners and will be rolled out nationwide in retail stores across the U.S. until the end of the year.

Let's continue with La Prairie. The disruptions that negatively affected La Prairie in the U.S. and travel retail in China in the first quarter have mostly faded. As a result, La Prairie returned to growth in the second quarter. Net sales increased by 2.2% organically following a decline of 14.9% in the first quarter. The domestic China business remained a key growth driver for La Prairie. For the fifth consecutive quarter, China delivered high single-digit to double-digit sell-out growth. Net sales grew by 12% organically in the second quarter with sell-in broadly in line with sell-out, demonstrating a healthy inventory level in the trade. And we have exciting plans for La Prairie in the second half of the year.

With the launch of Swiss Pristine in September, we are introducing a more accessible entry-level price point to the brand. This will help us recruit new consumers while creating a pathway into the broader La Prairie portfolio over time. In parallel, this will allow us to selectively expand our distribution, particularly in North America into specialty beauty retail. At a price point of between EUR 180 to EUR 300, this launch will broaden access to La Prairie while preserving the luxury brand experience that defines La Prairie.

Our Health Care business continued to perform strongly, delivering organic sales growth of 6.2% in the second quarter and 4% in the first half of the year. With market share gains across all regions and categories, our health care brands have now delivered 3 consecutive years of market share growth, further strengthening their leadership position in Wound Care. Growth was primarily driven by innovation. Building on the success of our Second Skin Protection range, we recently expanded the franchise with a Spray Plaster and a liquid plaster concentrate. Both innovations performed ahead of expectations and contributed strongly to net sales growth.

Now let's turn to NIVEA. NIVEA net sales dynamics continued to be challenging in the second quarter, with net sales declining by 6.7% organically. For the first half of the year, net sales declined by 6.8%. Let me put this performance into perspective. The decline reflects both sell-in headwinds and underlying challenges with the brand itself. The sell-in headwinds include ongoing customer conflicts in Europe, sun season phasing, some trade destocking as well as phasing effects related to our Q4 2025 innovation calendar. While these factors had a much greater impact on shipments into the trade and consumer demand, we view this as largely temporary even if some may remain a headwind into the next quarters.

NIVEA sell-out performance year-to-date has been more resilient and remains positive but below our expectations. This reflects the ongoing impact of the crisis in the Middle East as well as the weaker-than-expected performance of our core portfolio. To address the challenges related to our core portfolio, we initiated our rebalancing strategy in the second half of the year, which has been delivered some positive results. But as these results to date are too isolated to improve NIVEA's growth trajectory on a global scale, we have initiated the next phase of our turnaround plan.

Before we dive deeper into actions for the next phase, let me give you an update on the first phase of rebalancing. In the second half of 2025, we initiated the NIVEA rebalancing to restore the brand competitiveness and create a broader foundation for growth. The strategy is built on 3 pillars. First, portfolio rebalancing. We expanded our focus beyond premium face care and strengthened investments in body care and the deodorants. This included shifting marketing resources, optimizing assortments and improving in-store execution.

Second, accessible face care. We increased our focus on more accessible face care offerings such as NIVEA Facial, helping us recruit new consumers and expand our reach. Building on its success, we are now rolling out the concept in Europe as Face Plus. Third, localization within the frame. We gave key markets greater flexibility to adapt products and activations to local consumer needs while maintaining the integrity of the NIVEA brand. The adaptation of the NIVEA LUMINOUS for emerging markets is one example, combining localized formats and activation to improve consumer relevance and market performance.

This strategy has delivered some initial positive results. Our sell-out performance has been improving on a global level and across key regions. It demonstrates our ability to return to growth as a result of rebalancing marketing investment and optimizing our assortment focus. However, while encouraging, sellout growth remains below the market level and is not yet broad enough to restore growth sustainably across the entire brand on a global scale. To restore growth globally, we are doubling down on our actions and initiated the next phase of rebalancing, a decisive turnaround plan for the next 18 months.

Our objective is clear, broaden NIVEA's growth drivers and strengthen the brand's competitiveness across markets, categories and consumer segments. So far, we have distributed investments more evenly across face care, body care and deodorants. The next phase is about unlocking the growth opportunities created by NIVEA's full portfolio across all categories. We are putting more focus on NIVEA accessibility and value for money propositions are the key drivers of penetration and volume. We'll also fully leverage NIVEA's local relevance. This is already reflected in our innovation pipeline that will respect local specifics and existing stronger franchises.

Restoring sustainable growth requires not only the right portfolio, but also strong consumer activation. We will therefore, increase and sharpen our focus on consumer-facing investments even further to achieve the greatest impact on our business. Let's now look at our actions for this next phase in more detail. NIVEA's strength lies in being a multi-category, multi-generation and multi-country brand. This breadth has always been one of NIVEA's greatest competitive advantages. As part of our turnaround efforts to date, we broadened our focus beyond premium face care and strengthened investment across face care, Body Care and the deodorants.

We are now taking the next step by unlocking the growth opportunities of our full portfolio. We are identifying opportunities beyond category boundaries by applying the right marketing spend and broad-based innovation. We will not be dogmatic about which categories to endorse, but also leverage strong existing franchises across regions. In Germany, for example, we cannot ignore our strong footprint in showers. And in Southern Europe, LEAP is an essential part of the portfolio. At the same time, we are responding faster to changing consumer needs and market trends through an accelerated innovation pipeline.

Reinforcing NIVEA's accessibility remains a strategic priority. Consumers have long trusted NIVEA to deliver effective skin care that combines quality, affordability and broad availability. We'll continue to support our existing scale platforms across multiple price tiers and step up our efforts in the mid- to lower price ranges where we see significant opportunities to grow. This approach will help us recruit new consumers, drive volume, increase household penetration and strengthen NIVEA relevance across income groups, life stages and markets.

We are strengthening our ability to win locally while preserving the consistency and scale advantages of a global brand. First, we are investing behind NIVEA's strongest local franchises through locally relevant innovation. A good example are the line extension of NIVEA Facial in Brazil or the launch of Nivea Softgel in India developed specifically to address local consumer preferences and market needs.

Second, we are leveraging successful local concepts across markets. Following the success of NIVEA Facial in Brazil, we're expanding the platform into Europe at the accessible face care line, NIVEA Face Plus, allowing us to benefit from proven consumer propositions across regions. Third, we are accelerating our ability to respond to local trends and specific consumer demand. This includes ingredient-led propositions such as cocoa-based innovations in Africa.

Taken together, these initiatives allow us to combine the strength of a global brand with the relevance of local execution, helping us sharpen consumer relevance, broaden our growth drivers and strengthen NIVEA competitiveness across markets. Restoring sustainable growth requires not only the right portfolio and innovation pipeline, but also highly effective consumer-facing investment. We are, therefore, stepping up our marketing activities that drive the greatest business impact, concentrating resources on the touch points that most directly influence consumers where they are.

In this context, we'll boost our investment by EUR 100 million in the second half of this year compared to the same period in previous years. Before handing over to Astrid, let me highlight that bringing Nivea back to growth will require disciplined execution and time. Over the next 18 months, we will rigorously monitor progress and continuously sharpen our focus to maximize impact.

Astrid will now give you an overview on Tesa and our financial performance. Over to you, Astrid.

Thank you, Vincent. Now let us review Tesa's performance for the quarter. Tesa recorded organic sales growth of plus 2.5% in the second quarter and minus 0.9% in the first half year. While the Electronics business declined against an exceptionally strong first half last year, the broader industry portfolio remained resilient. Excluding electronics, industry delivered solid growth and accelerated in the second quarter.

The improvement in Q2 was driven by broad-based momentum across several business units. Industrial trade and converting delivered double-digit growth. Printing and Packaging Solutions accelerated significantly, and the Electrical Systems continued its strong development despite declining global car production. The automotive business also gained momentum in Q2, supported by increasing penetration in Asia and continued growth in the electric vehicle segment.

Within the Electronics segment, market conditions became more challenging during the second quarter, particularly in Greater China. Ongoing distributor and converter destocking as well as weaker demand in key customer applications weighed on performance. As a result, electronics remained below the strong prior year level and offset the positive momentum in other parts of the portfolio.

Looking ahead, potential shortages in the availability of semiconductors may impact the second half of the year negatively, both on sales growth of the electronics business and the corresponding mix effect on Tesa's profitability. The consumer business also showed a better trend in Q2, delivering low single-digit growth. Overall, the second quarter demonstrated improving momentum across most of Tesa's portfolio, helping to offset the headwinds in electronics.

Now let's continue with the detailed financial results. Consumer business net sales declined to EUR 4.113 billion in the first half of 2026 at an organic growth rate of minus 4.0%. Adverse foreign exchange effects resulted in lower nominal growth of minus 5.0%. EBIT declined to EUR 632 million with an EBIT margin of 15.4%. The 60 basis points decline was mainly driven by gross margin pressure, partly offset by cost discipline in overhead costs. Our Tesa business recorded an organic net sales decline of minus 0.9% in the same period, closing the first half with net sales of EUR 839 million.

Due to unfavorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales declined by minus 2.1%. Tesa's EBIT at EUR 136 million remained below the 2025 level, mainly reflecting the weaker contribution from the Electronics business, elevated input costs and continued investments to support future growth. Looking at our Consumer business across regions. While the first half year performance across regions was negatively impacted by NIVEA's softer net sales development, the underlying demand remained more resilient.

In addition, the performance in North America, Western Europe and Africa, Asia, Australia was affected by several specific factors beyond NIVEA's overall net sales development. North America was negatively impacted by retailer disruptions affecting La Prairie in the first quarter as well as Coppertone's performance. Excluding these factors, organic net sales growth in North America would have been plus 2.5%, supported primarily by the strong performance of our Derma business.

La Prairie in North America also returned to growth in the second quarter. Western Europe was adversely affected by the disruption of Travel Retail in China. As you know, we record La Prairie's Travel Retail business in Western Europe, which represented a 70 basis points headwind to growth in the first half. Beyond this, ongoing customer conflicts affecting NIVEA also weighed materially on the performance in Europe. Latin America benefited from an improving NIVEA performance in Brazil in the second quarter, supported by key innovations alongside a strong sun and body performance.

Derma also continued to accelerate and delivered strong double-digit growth across the region. Lastly, the crisis in the Middle East continues to weigh on the Africa, Asia and Australia region with 160 basis points headwind on growth. Beyond the impact from the Middle East, the performance was affected by strategic channel shifts in Malaysia and the Philippines, softer consumption and lower net sales in Indonesia and parts of Africa.

Now let's take a look at the development of our consumer gross margin. Our consumer gross margin decreased by 100 basis points from 62.0% in H1 2025 to 61.0% in H1 2026. Pricing contributed moderately, adding 10 basis points. Increased costs driven by higher raw material prices and limited volume growth weighed on our gross margin. The lower volume development resulted in reduced factory utilization, leading to higher unit costs and creating a headwind for gross margin. Mix effects were flat due to a dilutive effect from the NIVEA rebalancing, offset by the continued outperformance of our Derma business.

Lastly, unfavorable foreign exchange effects contributed minus 60 basis points. Let me conclude our financial overview by highlighting the key elements of our group income statement. Our group's net sales amounted to EUR 4.952 billion in the first half of 2026, representing an organic decline of minus 3.5%. Our group gross margin decreased by 110 basis points to 58.3%. In addition to the factors outlined for the consumer business, Tesa's gross margin was affected by material cost inflation, currency fluctuations as well as a negative mix effect due to the lower share of the electronics business.

Marketing and selling expenses increased to 34.8% of sales from 34.2% in the prior year. We continue to prioritize consumer-facing investments and maintained working media spending at a stable level. As in previous years, we continue to invest in innovation with R&D expenses increasing to 3.8% of sales, underlining our commitment to building the foundation for future growth. At the same time, we maintained a disciplined approach to our general and administrative costs, leading to a reduction of these expenses in the first half of 2026.

This development reflects our ongoing focus on cost discipline and efficiency, although part of the improvement was driven by phasing effects that are expected to normalize throughout the year. As a result, EBIT, excluding special factors, amounted to EUR 768 million, corresponding to a margin of 15.5%. Lower gross margins were partly offset by disciplined overhead cost management and an improved other operating result. Special factors amounted to EUR 8 million, significantly below the prior year level of EUR 20 million. In addition, a substantially improved financial result and a lower effective tax rate supported profitability. Consequently, profit after tax remained broadly stable at EUR 558 million, while earnings per share increased to EUR 2.52, supported by our share buyback program.

Back to you, Vincent.

Thank you, Astrid. Now let us turn to our full year and midterm outlook. Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, we continue to expect a challenging and volatile market environment with geopolitical tensions, particularly in the Middle East continue to weigh on consumer sentiment and consumption. And while we have initiated the next phase of our NIVEA rebalancing strategy with a decisive turnaround plan, the measures will take some time to become fully visible.

In addition to the factors affecting our top line performance, several headwinds will further impact our EBIT margin in the full year. First, the crisis in the Middle East continues to put pressure on input costs, resulting in higher input costs across our portfolio. Second, the NIVEA rebalancing creates a negative mix effect as we strengthen the accessible core of our brands portfolio. This effect will fade over time, and we expect the higher-margin businesses, Derma and La Prairie to outgrow NIVEA, supporting a more positive mix effect in the midterm. Third, we are deliberately stepping up our consumer-facing investment, especially at a time when NIVEA's growth needs to be reignited. Supporting our brands and executing the NIVEA turnaround plan remain clear priorities.

We are increasing investments behind the initiatives that drive long-term growth and value creation. Of course, we are working on various efficiency measures across the organization to mitigate these cost headwinds. This includes efficiencies in supply chain, streamlining overhead costs and reviewing unprofitable parts of our portfolio. We have realized savings in recent years already and will accelerate our efforts going forward.

Overall, we expect consumer EBIT margin to be around 250 basis points below the 2025 level. As a result, our adjusted guidance for the full year 2026 is as follows: for the Consumer business, we expect a low single-digit organic sales decline from previously flat to slightly growing organic sales. We'd expect an EBIT margin, excluding special factors in the Consumer segment of at least 11% for 2026, down from 13.6% in 2025.

For tesa, we confirm our guidance of flat to slightly growing organic sales and expect an EBIT margin, excluding special factors, slightly below the prior level. Overall, for the group, we expect a low single-digit organic sales decline and an EBIT margin, excluding special factors of at least 11.8%, down from 14% in 2025. Now let us turn to our midterm outlook. Our immediate priority is the disciplined execution of our turnaround plan for NIVEA. Based on initiatives already underway, we expect to return to net sales growth in 2027 with a stabilization of our EBIT margin.

Our ambition to outperform the market in the midterm remains intact. Starting from 2028, we expect to return to profitable growth with net sales growth above market and steady EBIT margin improvement. At the same time, we are committed to improving our cash conversion rate in line with the industry, which translates into a free cash flow of at least 50% of EBITDA in the midterm. The use of cash for inorganic growth remains a core element of our capital allocation strategy as we continue to pursue M&A opportunities to enhance our portfolio. At the same time, we have strengthened our commitment to deliver improved returns to shareholders via share buybacks and dividends.

With that, we are happy to answer your questions. Over to you, Christopher, for the Q&A.

Thank you, Vincent. Now we're ready to go to the Q&A.

And this morning, we'll start with Jefferies, Molly Wylenzek.

A couple of questions from me, please. Why are we not using some of that EUR 100 million investment further up the P&L? How comfortable are you that the price point you have on NIVEA is the right one here? And secondly, just on Coppertone, I noted that you talked about North America performance ex retailer disruption for La Prairie and Coppertone. I understand why you adjust for La Prairie disruption given that it was a one-off. Why Coppertone? Are you thinking about doing something different with that brand?

Thank you, Molly, for your questions. I will take both of them. On NIVEA, you have to clearly have in mind that we are pretty well priced. As we showed clearly, we have 2 products which are more expensive, which are Luminous and Epicelline. The majority of our products are between EUR 2 and EUR 10. So we don't see any need to reduce those prices. What we believe is the right thing to do is to focus on them to come with new news on those products, to come also with new proposal, the Face Plus strategy, the Face Plus launch, for example, exactly in this range of products.

So we believe that it is -- our mission is to launch on new product and to support them with the best consumer-facing investment, which means in the majority of cases, media will increase our investment behind those products, but also in-store activity, everything which is allowing consumers to get back to NIVEA and to get back to this affordable offer of NIVEA.

On Coppertone, we are clearly disappointed by the results. We have been trying over the last years to regain growth. It's true that the brand had been harmed by multiple changes over the years until we bought it. The mission we have given to the team is to focus on sports, and we have an extremely successful partnership with a rugby woman, Ilona Maher. So we are doing well in sport. And the second mission we gave to the team is to improve profitability. As you might remember, we moved the production to Mexico. So we are on the verge of being profitable with the brand, which is, I think, not the most exciting mission we were hoping to give to the brand, but at least it allows us to focus on the other brands, and you see the launch of Aquaphor, which is for me -- for us, extremely promising.

The next question is from Warren Ackerman of Barclays.

It's Warren here at Barclays. So the first one, Vincent, is a bit of a step back. I mean, when you became CEO, NIVEA had a very good 2023 and 2024, but 2025 and 2026 have been poor, and we're now talking about another 18-month transition. So effectively, it's 3 to 4 years. So you're doing the pivot.

But looking back, how did -- I'm still not clear how Beiersdorf misread the market trends so much. And I guess the question we're getting is, how can investors be confident that your diagnosis is the right one, the amount of money is the right amount and the time frame is right. Is there any risk that you think that NIVEA issues go deeper and it's just lost relevance to consumers, and that's what retailers are seeing and delisting you? And then the second one is more on the margins for Astrid. Can you talk a little bit about the phasing of margins into 2027, Astrid, between first half and second half?

I mean your first question is absolutely fair, and I'm happy to answer that. If we look a little bit at the history, before becoming CEO, I was in charge of the Derma business. And as you remember, this was a small business, absolutely under focus. And I took Thiamidol as the extraordinary opportunity to transform the business, and it is today a business which is flying, and we have good hopes also with Aquaphor.

So this investment into technology was clearly paying off on Derma. The bet on NIVEA that we took in 2021 was to say, okay, we have this Thiamidol opportunity. We have also lost over the years what was making NIVEA so unique. We were the first face care brand in the world. We were the first brand in history. We thought there was an opportunity to focus on Thiamidol to make -- to get back to face care to propose also something which was more premium. And we must admit it worked. It worked because at the same time, we grew and NIVEA reached level that did never reach in the history without losing ground on the other franchisees.

So we were lucky, I would say, until 2024, even the last quarter of 2024 was extremely good and growing double digit because we were growing the premium face care category without impacting the other categories. From 2025, things change. not only some of our competitors were much better, more agile and the local brand, the Indie brand, the current brands. But also, we clearly see that this overinvestment on premium face care was damaging in a way the value for money positioning of NIVEA, the fact that we have to be accessible. And this is what we started to change. And I think we're pretty quick at changing that.

We already, I think, shared the first rebalancing message in May. We were able to shift the media investment. That was the first thing we could do into more affordable categories. And you could see the sellout, the fact that we are gaining, we are growing in sellout is something which is pretty positive. So I believe that now after those months where we test and learn, where we look at a little bit how this rebalancing could work without additional launches, we feel more confident that now that we can come with new launches, and I think Face Plus for me is the best example, we can not only go back to what has made the strength of NIVEA over the century, but also keeping also this balance between being able to offer affordable product, but also to be also able to bring skin care technology to consumers with our premium offers. That's the bet we are making out.

We feel confident. We will never be overconfident. We have still a lot of work to do. And you see that even if we grow in sellout, we are not yet gaining market share. But what we have been looking at over the last 6 months is making us believe that we have found the right way. We just have to be absolutely brutal in the way we support it, hence the decision to impact the EBIT by increasing dramatically the media investment. So this is where we are. No overconfidence, no under confidence, but the feeling that we have learned also from our mistakes, and we have learned also from the last 6 months, and we feel that we have found a way to get back to growth -- to get back to a sustainable growth with NIVEA.

Warren, your question related to 2027 margins, and I'm assuming you're referring to how could we keep margins for the full year stable when the back half margins for this year are obviously quite a bit lower. One, I would like to remind you that we have this regularly every year that our first half margins are substantially higher than the back half. That is also significantly linked to how our business works. We have a very profitable European business and big sun care business, and that's really always impacting significantly the first half of the year. And we don't see that changing in the new year.

Additionally, we are expecting to be phasing our spend quite a bit different next year. We are now to really accelerate the momentum, putting significantly more money in the back half and are looking to phase that quite differently. And beyond that, we do see our mix having a positive impact in 2027. We continue to see a good picture for our Derma business, and that's obviously very much helping our margin. And then we do hope it's probably early hopes, but we do hope for continued stabilization and growth of our luxury business, which obviously also has a quite positive impact when it then comes. So that's a bit why we do feel we can hold our margins next year at the level of this year, obviously, a quite low level.

Just quickly to clarify, Astrid, on that. You said mix will be positive. If you're shifting down from facial care and you're taking pricing down, how is mix going to be positive? And then secondly, on the marketing spend, EUR 100 million in the second half, should we expect that's a onetime increase? Or are you expecting to multiply that by 2 for 2027? Just trying to understand if it's a kind of one-timer or how we think about the marketing spend next year?

Warren, we're already bringing down the mix for NIVEA this year given that we're really rebalancing already into those other, let's say, price points and categories. So that's already creating a base that will be easier to compare to in 2027. So we're not expecting NIVEA in the end to significantly drop further in 2027 given, again, the brands -- the other brands growth, then it should help us to get to a more positive mix picture. So that -- on that question -- sorry, the second part of your question?

Just the marketing media.

Sorry, yes, media. So no, we are not expecting to double that for the year. This is what I was saying that we are expecting to more even that out over the year. We will obviously also look to grow in the year to come with that also deliver a stronger marketing budget from that alone.

And the next one is JPMorgan, Celine Pannuti.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

So 2 questions. So a bit coming back on the fundamental question, Vincent. So you've done your due diligence, you decided that you need more innovation, more affordability across the portfolio. I think if we think about NIVEA over maybe the next -- the last 15 years has been problematic. And the question is, and that's why you appointed a Head of NIVEA when you became as CEO, the relevance of the brand and how you managed to rejuvenate it.

So my question is, when you look at your digital capabilities, marketing capabilities, innovation and you benchmark that versus your peers, how confident are you that you have done enough in terms of transforming those key skills in the organization to be relevant now with the consumer. First. Second question, on Q2, can you tell us what impact of Sun Care has been on the Q2 like-for-like for Consumer? And I would like to understand, if I think about the guidance down low single digits for the year, still would imply quite a better performance in the second half of the year. And I think you probably had some benefit from Sun Care in Q2. So what's going to be better in the second half and by region, maybe if you can help us in terms of maybe having less impact of disruption with sell-in, sell-out or the impact of innovation?

Celine. On your question about the due diligence and you're absolutely using the right word. I think we -- what we are absolutely convinced of is that we are clearly the best in terms of R&D, skin care. And if you think about Thiamidol, if you think about Epicelline, if you think also, we will talk about that next quarter about the launch of S-Biomedic on acne. We have clearly demonstrated that Beiersdorf is back to being the leading company in skin care research and development. But that doesn't make everything.

And clearly, you're absolutely right. This is obviously the peak of the pyramid. They are the best things we can propose to consumers. But the world of innovation in the world of beauty, it goes beyond just coming with the best molecules. And here I would say, I think we are pretty good in terms of innovation, the way the innovation we are proposing. We are not good enough in the rhythm, the fact that the time to market between the ideation and the market launch. That is something we are working on in order to improve that dramatically. We are becoming much more pragmatic. For example, we are not hesitating at all using third-party manufacturers when there is a trend coming and we want to see it.

You might have seen -- I'll come back to Sun, but the launch of the -- the NIVEA Sun Stick is something we just bought in Korea from the manufacturers in Korea. We put the stamp NIVEA. We put a nice Korean flag, and this is our best-selling SKU in sun care this year. So we are much more pragmatic. We are also looking at ways also to accelerate all the process. So we are not good enough. We are not bad, but we can improve that. On digital capabilities, frankly, I think we are pretty good. I think we've been accelerating our expertise first in e-commerce, second in digital marketing, then in influencer marketing, and extremely high rhythm. We are not the first one, clearly not, but we are not the last one. And we've been able to develop -- to recruit a lot of profile, a lot of experts.

Today, we are spending 70% of our media investment in digital marketing. 30% of that is with influencer, and we have learned to manage influencer. So I think we are pretty good. We have also a global partnership with Publicis. So we are getting to being pretty good. So some work to do on the way we drive innovation. But I think on digital, we are okay. We can do even better, but we are not bad. I will answer on Sun Care, and then Astrid will come back on the more bigger question on Q2. On Sun Care, we are doing well. The good thing, we were a bit worried last month because the sun season started late, and you have all seen that. There was really some rain until May. So clearly, instead of starting in May, starting -- rather starting in June. We are very happy with the results of June.

I mean, to give you a perspective, the month of June in sell-in for Sun Care is the best ever in our history. So -- and it's interesting because June is just customers buying because they have sold out the product. We're also gaining market share in June. We are doing a very good month in July. We already some good figures from Germany. So I think we are on the verge of doing a pretty good season on sun care and Eucerin is also doing extremely well.

It was...

Celine, your question about the full Q2?

My question was then like Sun had clearly an impact, probably the underlying would not have improved as much. So I want to understand, H2, you imply to be quite a step-up versus H1. What's going to change?

On Sun Care?

No, at the group level.

This is what I'm saying. No, I mean, H2, simply, we are coming with new products. What we have been doing on the rebalancing in NIVEA until now is just changing the way we're spending media investment. We could not overnight develop new products. We are coming with new products in the second semester. We are coming with big global initiatives. I mentioned the launch of Face Plus, which is inspired by Facial. We are coming with a few renovation. So clearly, on NIVEA, we have not only more media, but we have also more opportunities to convince consumers to try the brand and all our initiatives being into this price range below EUR 15.

But we have also other big things. We have the launch of Aquaphor on Derma. And this is, as we said, the biggest launch ever we've done in the U.S., and we have a fantastic support from retailers. And you see that already you can find the product at Walmart, Amazon and Target. We're also coming with a very strong pipeline on Eucerin. The pipeline this year was much more towards the second semester. We are also coming with the launch of Swiss Pristine in La Prairie. It's not only interesting as it allows us to recruit new consumer, but also we can go back to chains like Sephora, where we're not present before because we are too expensive. So we have a pretty good portfolio of launches in the second semester together, as I said, with plus EUR 100 million consumer-facing investment. That makes us pretty reasonably confident for the second semester.

And the next question is from Guillaume Delmas of UBS.

Two questions for me as well. The first one, Vincent, it's on the changes you've made to the strategy. I mean, do you think the challenges that you've been facing in the last, let's call it, couple of years were mostly down to media spend, its allocation and maybe the pace of innovation? Or do you actually see a need for a proper adjustment to your operating model? And then here, I would be thinking level of decentralization, maybe some changes in personnel or changing the incentive structure for Beiersdorf's employee and also maybe some changes to your portfolio with some brands like Coppertone or some country category combinations that have been a consistent drag distraction and that you could potentially divest or discontinue.

So apologies for the wrong question here, but what I'm getting to is, do you think it's only a NIVEA brand issue? Or do you think it's wider than that and therefore, would require a proper comprehensive restructuring program to try and change or at least adapt Beiersdorf's culture, execution and portfolio? And then my second question, it's more on Eastern Europe. We've seen 4 consecutive quarters of organic sales growth decline. It's deteriorating, in fact, quarter after quarter. So here, just wondering what's driving this weakness? And looking ahead, I mean, how quickly do you think you can fix the various issues in the region and return to what we've been more used to in the past, which is significant organic sales growth?

Guillaume, thank you for this question. I think on your first question, I think we clearly -- we made a bet. We made a bet, as I said, which was to focus on premium face care in a way to transform this brand, which was more personal care/body care into a full skin care brand. Again, it worked until 2024. Then we clearly could not continue overspending at the expense of other categories. So we are clearly changing the strategy, moving into these lines which are more affordable, being quicker at bringing the right innovation, being also less dogmatic, accepting the idea that we launched a new range of shower. It works, that's great. It doesn't work, we launch another one.

So yes, there is a mix of changing the way we allocate the investment and the launches and pace of innovation. On the operating model, I think I wouldn't say there is an issue with the Beiersdorf operating model. Look at the success story of Derma I mean we were nobody in 2017. We were doing EUR 500 million of sales with Eucerin. And now we are one of the top leaders, and we are growing, gaining market share, invading countries like Brazil, China and the U.S., which are not easy ones. So we are also able as a company when we have the right strategy to go bold and to be successful. The big difference with NIVEA is that NIVEA historically is local, has been always managed locally. And this is where you're absolutely right.

One of the change we are doing is we are more open to decentralization, to freedom in a frame. We are not coming back to the time where everybody could do everything. There were advertising campaigns for every product in every country. But we are saying, yes, it makes sense. Facial in Brazil is something which is special, has to be supported the way Brazil should support it. NIVEA Softgel in India, this is different. So we are clearly pushing and incentivizing our people in the countries to be bolder, to be more daring, to make mistakes also and not to expect everything to come from Hamburg.

So that's what we are doing right now. It's a change of mindset. It's also a bit contradictory to what I've been saying over the last few years. But I mean, we have to accept the reality. And I hope to see some changes. Again, I think the launch of Face Plus is a great opportunity to demonstrate this new mindset. On your question about Eastern Europe, you have a mix of 2 issues. Historically, Eastern Europe is a personal care business for us. We sell very small skin care business. So obviously, the big prioritization, not only on skin care, but also on face care was not done to support Eastern Europe. So clearly, we have changed that. That's the first thing.

The second thing also, this is a market where particularly Poland, 100% of the growth is coming from Korean brands. So here, clearly, we are struggling like all our competitors because we are not a Korean brand. So what we have been developing together with our retailers is to come with a much more tailor-made strategy. We are -- for example, there is one retailer which owns 50% of skin care category. He will have the exclusivity of all our launches. That's the kind of thing we are doing.

What we have also to acknowledge is that Eucerin is also doing extremely well. That's also the good news. We have Eucerin growing double digit. We are gaining market share. We're also launching a new country. So we have this -- NIVEA is struggling, but we have to improve, and we have Eucerin doing extremely well. Last but not least, be aware also that in the figures of Eastern Europe, you have also CIS, you have the Russian world where obviously, we -- as you know, we have stopped investing since the start of the war. So when you don't launch anything, you don't invest anything. Obviously, you lose business. That is clearly impacting the second quarter more than in the past.

And just to follow up. So no need to streamline your portfolio. You're happy with your current portfolio and country category combination.

No, we do. You're right. So I'll give you an example, in China, we are extremely successful with NIVEA, Eucerin, La Prairie and Chantecaille. We decided to divest Maestro. We saw that Maestro being in the styling category was not making sense. There are things we are looking at. It's not so much divesting because, as you know, we have a pretty small portfolio. It's more taking the decision to stop investing on a specific category when it's proven not successful.

Also choices we made in the past, we decided not to launch NIVEA, Epicelline in Latin America because we thought that it was making no sense to come with such an expensive product in markets where clearly you have a price limit, which is more around EUR 10 than EUR 20. That's the kind of thing we are doing. But we will continue to do that. We are looking at each and every opportunity to get rid of nonsuccessful business, nonprofitable business, and that's something we're going to do even more in the months to come.

Then the next question is from Jeremy Fialko from HSBC.

A couple of questions from me. So I know this came up on the Q1 call as well, but I think the sell-in sell-out dynamics need to be explored a little bit more. But I guess the reality is that had you reported NIVEA growth slightly positive in line with what you say your sell-out is, then we wouldn't be having quite these sorts of discussions. So I think we need to understand why is there this big gap and why does it persist and kind of when you see the sell-in and sellout actually being aligned?

And then the second thing, which links into that the retailer disputes. And from my perspective, this seems to be one of the kind of biggest, most impactful, longest-lasting customer disputes that I can remember. So could you perhaps give us a bit more clarity on when you think these are actually going to end? And then would there be any sort of a restock or kind of repiping once you get the disputes resolved given that presumably the retailers will actually have quite low inventories of your products by now? And also finally, on that point, have you lost any shelf space as a result of the dispute?

On your first question about the gap between the sell-in and the sell-out, I think there are a few elements and one of them is one you just mentioned, retailer dispute. If I want to simplify a little bit the calculation, 30% of the gap between sell-in and sell-out is due to the issue with retailer conflicts. And I will come back to that. It's partly true for Europe because we were facing retailers. We wanted to have deflation, and we did not accept that. So we have been discussing a lot with them.

And the good news that as of today, I think we have a deal with customers covering 92% of the business in Europe. So we are close to the end. and we are not expecting any further disruptions. There was no big practices. We were able to sell our products, of course, with very low stock. So we are not expecting restocking. We will also be careful with that. We want clearly to finish 2026 with a healthy situation in terms of stock. So we have -- we are back to normal. I mean the sun care season was a good one. We have the launches coming. But no, don't expect any strong restocking -- business as usual, just healthy stocking, and that's the way it's going to work.

On the -- so I said 30% is the conflict. 50% is clearly destocking and the and sun phasing. I mean we -- as you know very well, in Q4, we clearly invested a lot in terms of marketing spending, but also in terms of in-store activity on the launch of Derma Control Deo, the launch of Epicelline, and we have to digest the stocks. This is why in 2026, we are more -- we didn't come with big initiatives in the first quarter and the second quarter. We just digested all the products we have been putting on shelf. We are happy with Epicelline. Epicelline is the #2 anti-age serum in Europe. We are doing okay. Derma Control is under expectations, but with the 1% market share, that's okay also.

But clearly, what we had quantified in the sell-in in the fourth quarter was much bigger than that. And then you have 20%, I said 30% conflict, 50% destocking indoor and sun phasing, 20%. There are some decisions we took in some countries. We are changing the route to market in Malaysia and Philippines. So these kind of small things, and it makes a difference between the sell-in and the sellout. The good news, as I said, the sell-out is growing every month. We are growing globally in Europe, in Emerging Markets. So that's also the reason why we feel that now that we are coming with the next launches, with the right launches, we should accelerate this dynamic and not only increase sell-out, but also get back to gaining market share on NIVEA.

And so, just a final follow-up. When do you think your sell-in and your sell-out would be broadly aligned?

I hope by the end of the year, we should be in this situation.

The next question is from Olivier Nicolai of Goldman Sachs.

Two questions, please. First, on -- you're stepping up investment on NIVEA and you reset the group margins for consumer. First, will you still be able to invest as much as you want in Eucerin, which is growing faster and has a stronger gross margin? And then secondly, should the answer be to acquire actually more brands sold at different price points and dilute the group reliance on NIVEA, which is already a very large brand compared to Beiersdorf. And then just a follow-up on the buyback. I was looking at the rates of share buyback so far. At this pace, you're only going to reach half of the program. I was just wondering if there was any technical aspect here that we are not aware and if we should expect an acceleration in the buyback?

Olivier, I will take the first 2 questions, and Astrid will talk about share buyback. Yes, we are absolutely well funded on Eucerin and Aquaphor. This is clearly something also we have increased versus our initial plan. We have not only the launch of Aquaphor Body, which is extremely important for us in the U.S., but we have also a big launch plan on Eucerin. So we have absolutely the money we need to accelerate the growth, and we are pretty optimistic on both Eucerin and Aquaphor.

On your second question, absolutely. Absolutely, we need to acquire new brands. Obviously, I would prefer them to come rather late than soon because I think I want absolutely the 22,000 employees of Beiersdorf to focus on the turnaround of NIVEA and the growth of Eucerin and La Prairie. But yes, we need absolutely to increase the number of brands we have in the portfolio. I'm not sure this is in the category of accessible skin care. We have the #1 brand in the world. I think we just have to do a better work with NIVEA. So this is perhaps more into categories which are more into luxury and derma, where we have an extremely limited portfolio. But clearly, we need to increase the portfolio. We need to be less dependent on NIVEA, and that's something we're going to look at. But again, big priority, big focus for everybody, turn around NIVEA.

On your second question -- or third question related to the share buyback. So yes, we have started the program. It's happening, and there is not a decision to do less than what we've committed, which is the EUR 750 million over, let's say, the 2-year, 18-month period. So that's -- there's still commitment to that.

And then we'll have Tilly Eno from Morgan Stanley.

Just one on emerging markets where you've mentioned sellout still running below the market in NIVEA. You've obviously mentioned in Eastern Europe, the impact of Korean brands being very competitive there. In your other emerging markets like Lat Am, Southeast Asia, who do you think you are predominantly losing share to? Where is that main pressure coming from?

You have the -- like everywhere, we have clearly the development of local brands. It could be local coming with just one ingredient and a nice support from influencer, but you have also Korean brands everywhere. In Lat Am and ASEAN, you have also the good work done by our competitor, Unilever, which is clearly back in the market with their brands, and they are bringing a new incentive to be stronger, to be bolder, to be also more creative. But overall, if I look at ASEAN, I'm pretty happy with the performance of our brands. I mean the change on LUMINOUS was a game changer. We have been trying since years to establish LUMINOUS as taking the European product.

And the moment when we came with LUMINOUS Glow with the new Galen like a sachet, like a gel, we are market leader. So that's something which is not only true for Thailand, but it's true for the rest of ASEAN. And we have also Eucerin, which is flying, was always very strong in Thailand, but we are extremely happy with the results in Malaysia. So overall, ASEAN is good. On Lat Am, we have a different story. We have Eucerin, which is flying. I mean you saw the results of Eucerin.

When I took over the brand 7 years ago, it was #18. We are #3 today. and we are doubling the sales this quarter and clearly being #1 on Thiamidol and Epicelline. We are struggling more on NIVEA with some good results on body. We have Facial doing well. We're struggling on deodorants and the rest of the countries being pretty good, also Mexico, Chile. So all in all, very good performance of Derma and improving on NIVEA. The thing which is important also to know is that historically, those markets are also much more body and deo market and face care. So obviously, the moment when we started to change dynamics, to move the focus from face care into deodorants and body, we are obviously meeting much more the expectations of those countries.

That was the last question. This concludes our conference call. Beiersdorf's next Investor Relations event will be the release of our third quarter sales performance on October 27, 2026. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf and look forward to seeing you back here again in the fall. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q1 2026 Results Conference Call. I'm Moritz, your Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christopher Sheldon, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2026 conference call. I'm here with our CEO, Vincent Warnery; and our CFO, Astrid Hermann. As always, we will start with a presentation of our sales performance of the quarter, followed by a Q&A session.

And with that, I'd like to hand over to Vincent.

Thank you, Christopher, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. Astrid and I will walk you through our sales figures for the first 3 months of 2026 and update you on the key strategic initiatives we are executing to strengthen our business. This includes an update on our ongoing NIVEA rebalancing.

Our Q1 sales were in line with our full year 2025 a few weeks ago, we anticipated a chart 2026 with several factors impacting La Prairie and NIVEA new sales performance. Our Derma business continue to demonstrate outstanding growth, fully delivering on its strategy. La Prairie faced headwinds through disruptions in the U.S. department channel and travel retail in China. Finally, NIVEA's first quarter net sales development is challenged, but we are making progress on NIVEA rebalancing. I will share more details on this a bit later.

How does this translate into numbers? In Q1, we saw an organic net sales decline of 4.6% at group level. Our consumer business declined by 4.7% organically. Derma delivered an outstanding plus 8.2% organic sales growth. Healthcare was up plus 1.9% on top of a difficult prior year comparison base. NIVEA and La Prairie faced headwinds with net sales declining by 7% and 14.9%, respectively.

The underlying sellout performance, however, showed an improving trend, making us more optimistic for the coming quarters. Tesa ended the first quarter with an organic net sales decline of 4.3%, mainly as a result of phasing-related double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2025. Our first difficult quarter performance was anticipated and reflected in our full year guidance for 2026. We continue to believe in our ability to return to growth as the year progresses.

Let's review the derma performance with our brands, Eucerin and Aquaphor. With an outstanding 8.2% organic sales growth, we again significantly outperformed the derma market, which is growing at low single-digit rates. This underscores the strength of our portfolio and the successful execution of our growth strategy.

Our success is driven by 2 pillars. First, our innovations. With our breakthrough in ingredients, Epicelline and Thiamidol endorsed by dermatologists, Eucerin continues to lead the way. Consumers are increasingly seeking science-backed efficacious derma products. And second, our successful expansion into white spaces. Three examples of these white space expansions are North America, Brazil and China.

North America, Derma's largest region delivered strong 7% organic sales growth driven by double-digit Aquaphor performance and the continued momentum of Eucerin Face, including Thiamidol. Eucerin in Brazil was able to more than double its net sales in Q1 and is close to the #3 position on the market only years after being #15. A key driver of the recent success is Eucerin Epicelline. Lastly, our Derma business in China is showing continued high double-digit growth, a clear testament to the successful rollout of Thiamidol on the domestic market.

Let's continue with La Prairie. Q1 was impacted by disruptions in the U.S. department store channel as well as travel retail in China. Both had a significant negative effect on the Q1 sell-in performance with net sales declining by 14.9% organic. However, this was not an indication of the underlying sellout demand. Retail sales, excluding disruptions, grew close to 10% in the first quarter.

A key growth driver continued to be China in the fourth consecutive quarter. We remain cautious on the outlook of La Prairie in a volatile luxury skin care market environment, but continue to see green shoots from its reposition strategy.

Now let's have a closer look at NIVEA. In line with what we showed you at our full year call several weeks ago, the mass market environment remains challenging, which is negatively affecting NIVEA performance. As we ended the year 2025, market volumes were flat and continue to be flat in the first months of 2026.

In addition to the market environment, 4 main factors negatively impacted NIVEA net sales in Q1. First, NIVEA lapped 2 strong prior year first quarters, leading to a more difficult baseline. Second, certain trade negotiation conflicts in Europe have had a negative net sales effect. Third, the sell-in of our major innovations, Epicelline and Derma Control lifted NIVEA net sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, while most of the corresponding sell-out was absorbed in Q1 and no new countries were launched in the new year.

Lastly, NIVEA's core portfolio has not returned to growth yet. However, the dynamics are improving as we are implementing our rebalancing strategy to restore NIVEA growth. But before we deep dive into the rebalancing, I want to demonstrate that also global innovations remain a cornerstone of NIVEA's strategy. NIVEA Epicelline continues to be on track.

We have already been satisfied with the sell-in and sell-out performance and are pleased to confirm that also the repurchase rates looks promising. In fact, the initial repurchase rates and intentions to repurchase figures of the NIVEA Epigenetic Serum in Europe are comparable to the figures of Eucerin in 2025.

Let me now take a few moments to remind you of our NIVEA strategy recalibration, the rebalancing of the portfolio. What do we mean by rebalancing? It's a shift in how we allocate resources and drive growth at NIVEA along 3 pillars. First, portfolio. We are broadening our focus across our key franchises, face care, body care and deodorants. In practical terms, this means that we are shifting marketing and innovation efforts to strengthen all 3 categories.

Second, accessible face care. We are rebalancing the focus also to popular face care products at a more accessible price range next to the premium face care lines like Luminous and Epicelline. And third, local relevance. Next to major global franchises, we will support important local product lines by giving key markets, for example, China, the U.S., India, Japan and Brazil, greater flexibility in local execution. This is what we call localization within a frame, empowering our regional teams to develop and activate products that resonate with local consumers while maintaining the integrity of the NIVEA brand.

Let me elaborate on 3 specific initiatives. First, body care in emerging markets. In our emerging market regions, we began to rebalance our marketing budget to body care in September last year. In addition, we focused our portfolio on the right franchisees with the right assortment in the right countries and reached our global advertising approach with local storytelling.

We also stepped up our efforts with the influencers and further improve in-store execution. As an initial results, we have seen NIVEA body care and also overall skin care market shares in emerging markets moving to positive territory this year in terms of both value and volume.

Second example, deodorants in Europe. As part of the Derma Control launch in the fall of 2025, we shifted marketing budget towards deodorants. This did not only help to promote Derma Control by the positive [ alloy ] effect on NIVEA Deo as a category. Together with assortment optimizations, it led to regain customer and consumer attention for NIVEA deodorants. As a result, the NIVEA Deo market share situation in Europe improved and recorded market share gains in the first months of this year.

And third example, Luminous Glow in emerging markets, a global innovation adapted to local needs. NIVEA Luminous initially struggled to scale in emerging markets due to its premium positioning. To unlock the full growth potential, the product was locally adapted across assortment, packaging, pricing and activation. This was implemented at the launch of the Luminous Glow line.

Thailand was the most prominent proof point. The launch of sachet formats, stronger claim communication and intensified influencer activation drove rapid consumer uptake. As a result, Luminous Skin Glow achieved a significant market share uplift and quickly became the #1 serum in the market.

As demonstrated by these examples, the rebalancing of NIVEA is underway. The measures will take some time to show their full impact, but NIVEA's current sellout dynamics already show a substantially better performance than the net sales decline in Q1. In fact, NIVEA's year-to-date sellout grew by 1.7% following 2 quarters of negative growth. These early indications make us optimistic that we are on the right track and that our rebalancing strategy is working.

Before I hand over to Astrid for tesa in the financial review, I would like to turn your attention to China, one of our key white space markets. At this time last year, I presented to you our ambitious plan in China to put our house in order. We implemented comprehensive restructuring measures, especially for NIVEA to lay the foundation for future success in this important white space market for Beiersdorf.

Our efforts are starting to pay out -- off. And we saw impressive growth across all 3 major brands in the first quarter of 2026. NIVEA increased net sales by 1/3 and Eucerin net sales grew in high double-digit territory. Also, La Prairie showed an impressive 12% retail sales growth, which is not a reflection of the weaker net sales performance in the quarter.

And with that, finally over to you, Astrid.

Thank you, Vincent, and good morning, everyone. Let's take a look at tesa's performance in the first quarter. Net sales declined by 4.3% organically, in line with expectations and as reflected in the full year guidance. The decline can be attributed to a high prior year comparison base in the electronics business. This was related to shifts in some customers' production footprint as well as adjusted order patterns.

The automotive sector remained challenging with tesa outperforming the market, especially in applications for new energy vehicles. The Consumer segment was impacted by strong performance in e-commerce.

Let me now take you through some further details of our Q1 performance. Beiersdorf Consumer business net sales declined to EUR 2.077 billion in the first quarter of 2026 at an organic growth rate of minus 4.7%. Adverse foreign exchange effects resulted in lower nominal growth of minus 7.7%. Our tesa business recorded an organic net sales decline of minus 4.3% in the same period, closing the quarter with net sales of EUR 407 million.

Due to unfavorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales declined in line with the consumer business by minus 7.7%. As a result, the group generated net sales of EUR 2.484 billion at organic and nominal growth rates of minus 4.6% and minus 7.7%, respectively.

Looking at our Consumer business across regions. The negative performance across regions is mostly attributable to the challenging net sales performance of NIVEA and La Prairie in the first quarter, while the underlying sell-out performance is positive. North America, Western Europe and the Africa/Asia/Australia regions were impacted by additional factors I would like to explain in more detail.

North America was negatively impacted by the retail disruption affecting La Prairie as well as Coppertone. Coppertone weighed on the first quarter performance as we are streamlining the portfolio to focus on the sports segment as well as promotional phasing shifts of net sales between quarters. Excluding these factors, the organic net sales growth of North America increases to plus 3.2%, mainly driven by the strong Derma performance.

Western Europe was adversely affected by the disruption of travel retail in China. As you will remember, we record La Prairie's travel retail business in Western Europe, which was 130 basis points headwind to growth in Q1.

Lastly, the crisis in the Middle East weighed on the Africa/Asia/Australia region with 170 basis points headwind on growth. Excluding the Middle East, Africa/Asia/Australia would have grown by 1.1%. Back to you, Vincent.

Thank you, Astrid. To conclude, Q1 was a challenging start to the year, but in line with our expectations. Our Derma business remains strong. NIVEA and La Prairie showed an unfavorable net sales performance, but positive sell-out dynamics point to an improvement in the quarters to come. Based on this, we are confirming our 2026 guidance.

For both our Consumer and tesa business, we continue to expect net sales to be flat to slightly growing organically with an EBIT margin, excluding special factors, slightly below the previous year. At group level, this translates to net sales flat to slightly growing organically with an EBIT margin, excluding special factors, slightly below 2025.

With that, we're happy to answer your questions. Over to you, Christopher, for the Q&A.

Thank you, Vincent. Now we're ready to go to the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] And we will start with Jeremy Fialko from HSBC this morning.

Just one sort of technical one to start with is whether you can give us the NIVEA sort of full Q1 number, whether you have any data that goes to the end of March. I saw the slide just took you to the end of February.

And then secondly, perhaps you could just talk a little bit about the kind of the cost situation and what you'll see from that perspective given some of the higher inputs and to what extent that puts greater risk on the margin side of your guidance?

I will -- Jeremy, I will take the first question and Astrid will take the second one. Your question about NIVEA. So the market share, the data we have is only until end of February, and that's why we're looking at year-to-day February.

In fact, you have -- if you -- the bridge between the net sales and the sell-out, you have 3 factors which explain that. The first one, which is obvious, I mentioned that already in the yearly call, we have an innovation phasing. And we did 100% of the sell-in of the 2 big launches, which are Epicelline and Derma Control in the Q4 2025 and even more in November, December. So obviously, all the countries have been sold in, we have to absorb the sell-out in the first quarter.

The second element, which is also important is that we have a market dynamics, which is flat. It's really 0% growth, and it has an effect on the core business, which remains negative, and this is what we have to correct. Third element, which we were not expecting, obviously, is the Middle East crisis. I think Astrid mentioned that. It cost us 50 basis points of NIVEA growth.

And the last element, which took place partly in March, we have some retailer conflicts. We have clearly some discussions with retailers, particularly in Germany and France, which are willing us to decrease prices. We are not willing to do that, and we will not accept any pressure to go in this direction, especially at a time when we have this uncertainty with the Middle East crisis.

So all of that makes a difference between a negative quarter in net sales and a positive quarter in sell-out at plus 1.7%. On your second point.

Jeremy, on the cost situation. So the immediate impact, given that the direct impact of oil and gas on us is relatively limited, primarily on the logistics side, has been manageable so far. We're obviously really watching the supply situation and ensuring that we are set there, really emphasizing that.

We are working through, obviously, many different scenarios, as you can imagine, on what could come if this crisis is staying for longer that clearly could trigger significant cost increases. And we will then obviously look at all the tools we have to ensure that we can offset the impact from that pressure.

Sorry, just a follow-up. Could you give us a bit more color on the retailer disputes and to what extent those are resolved or to what extent they will carry on affecting the business into Q2?

So it's under negotiation right now. And hopefully, we'll have some good results in the weeks to come. It's clearly focusing on, as I said, France and Germany. It's about a few retailers which are willing us to decrease prices, which is absolutely something we'll refuse. So we are discussing, we are exchanging. Hopefully, we'll have a solution because it's really limited to a few specific retailer in the coming days or weeks.

The next question is from Callum Elliott of Bernstein.

Maybe I could just start with following on from Jeremy's theme, looking at your slide on sell-out. If I look at the Q4, it shows sell-out basically flat and you reported kind of plus 2-ish on NIVEA. So let's call it 2 percentage points of inventory build on NIVEA in Q4.

Then you show positive 1.7% year-to-date versus the negative 7% that you've reported. So there's sort of 2 percentage points of stock build in Q4 and negative 9 percentage points of drag in Q1. Should I infer from that, that the majority of the negative 9 percentage points gap between sell-in and sell-out is the retail dispute rather than destocking?

And maybe you can just help us understand the discrepancy between the plus 2 percentage points in Q4 and the negative 9% in Q1.

I will give you the bridge. It's just to get the figures right. You have a decline in Q1 of NIVEA of minus 7% and you have an increase of sell-out of plus 1.7%. If you try to separate the different elements, as you mentioned quite clearly, you have 2 points of growth, which is the sell-out of the sell-in we did in Q4, you're absolutely right. You have 2 points which are linked to the retailer conflict.

You have, I would say, 50 basis points, which are linked to Middle East. And the rest is the evolution of the core business, let's say, 3%, which we have not yet been able to turn around, and this is what we are looking at with a good example I mentioned to you and deo in Europe, body in emerging markets and body and face in emerging market. This is what we are willing to improve through this rebalancing, but you got the math right.

Okay. Perfect. And maybe just a follow-up on the other sales, Coppertone, Chantecaille, et cetera. I think by my calculation, that sort of division, if I can call it that, is down 25% in reported terms in Q1. And I don't think you talk about it at all in the press release.

So could you just give us some color on exactly what's happening in that division? Is it still just ongoing Coppertone weakness? Or is there something else going on there?

So Coppertone, there was clearly a phasing change. The fact that one of the biggest U.S. customer decided to order in December because the Easter it was earlier than planned, makes us -- make a very nice Q4, but a very low Q1. So it does not impact the sell-ut. The sell-ut is pretty good now that we are focusing on sport. We are growing.

We are even growing in sport at 7.6% in sell-out, which is something we never had since we bought the brand. So that's more this phasing issue in terms of net sales. The rest of the brand, Chantecaille is obviously hit by the same phenomenon as La Prairie. So we have the Saks Fifth Avenue issue that is not sold. We sold -- we are selling back to Saks since March. And you have the change of travel retail operators in China. But the rest of the business is doing well.

And particularly, we are pretty happy with the U.S., if you exclude the Saks issue because we are growing in the U.S. and gaining market share. That's the 2 main brands. You have other small local brands, but not really relevant for the figures.

And the next question is from Warren Ackerman with Barclays.

Yes, a couple from me as well. The first one is just on the organic growth guidance. Given the slow start, Vincent, the minus 4.6%, how do you get confident on the full year guide. I mean you've obviously got a lot to do in the balance of the year. It doesn't look like you've got much wiggle room. Can you maybe sort of give us some of the building blocks to give us the confidence that, that guide is realistic?

And maybe if you're able to say whether you think the Q2 organic growth might be positive given the sort of sell-in, sell-out dynamics you've talked about? And then the second one is maybe a little bit on emerging markets because we still got Eastern Europe down, I think, 8.2% and LatAm down maybe a bit better than it's been trending.

But can you maybe sort of outline the rebalancing of NIVEA, how confident you are that you can get some of these big emerging markets back into better territory? How long is it going to take to see that kind of negative swinging back? That would be helpful.

Sure, Warren. So we are maintaining the guidance for 2026, as I mentioned. We are -- indeed, I would say what is pretty safe is Derma. We are seeing clearly very nice growth ahead of us. We have not only ambitions for Eucerin, but also for Aquaphor. And the fact that we have this extremely strong results in all our white spaces. I also could have mentioned India, I could have also mentioned Japan.

We just launched in Japan, make us pretty optimistic. So Derma will continue to be the growth driver of Beiersdorf for the quarters to come. We are also expecting now that we are out of the disruptions in luxury that now we are selling back to Saks Avenue. We have also the 2 new retail operators in Beijing and Shanghai. They are working. The app is working. So we are back to normal, and we see some pretty nice traction.

We have also, as you might remember, a very interesting launch with a more affordable line for La Prairie, which will allow us also to enlarge our distribution, not only to Amazon in the U.S., but also to other retailers in which we are not today because of the price level of La Prairie. So pretty positive about La Prairie.

The question is NIVEA. What is making us optimistic is that we are growing in sell-out. The plus 1.7% I was mentioning includes positive sell-out in all regions. And Europe, for example, which obviously is important for us, we are growing also in sell-out, plus 1.1%, which is the first time since a long time. So we see that the rebalancing is starting to pay off.

Obviously, one of the questions for Q2 will be the sun season. We've been very successful in the last 2 years. So we are ready to embrace a pretty nice season. So on this basis, we believe that Q2 will be flattish back to growth, slight growth, but we will clearly do better than Q1, and this is why we maintain the guidance.

On your second question about Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe was not so much linked to the focus on premium face care because this is -- we are mostly selling personal care and the body product, was more the strong development of local and Korean brands. and also some retailer issue that we have to tackle. So retailer issues, we are good.

We have a good conversation with the retailers, and we have also -- I think we'll be more proactive in the way we embrace the strategy. We will develop some exclusive partnership with some retailers. And back to growth on the key categories. As I mentioned, we are positive on the deodorants, and this is essential for Europe, not only for the growth, but also for the profit.

And we are also preparing a pretty nice launch in body and face. So we are not yet positive on Eastern Europe, but I think we have a good plan, and we should see some progress in the -- starting in Q2.

And the next one is Celine Pannuti from JPMorgan.

So my first question is on Middle East and the impact of the geopolitics. So from what you said, there was 170 bps impact on AAA. And so at the group level, I think it's like 40 basis points only for a month. So could you explain what that is and whether there was as well extra impact on travel retail? And what have you baked in for the potential impact of that in the second quarter?

And coming back on the COGS, I mean, clearly, we don't know -- there's a lot of things we don't know, but we also see that the spot prices is higher, that there are potential shortages of some derivatives of oil. So at this stage, is it fair to assume that already in the second half of the year, you are going to see a higher COGS inflation than what you thought at the beginning? And if you could give us a bit of an idea on that? And what measures are you planning to take whether pricing or cost savings to offset that?

My second question is regarding AAA. So I understand that there was an impact from Middle East, but nevertheless, growing 1.1% versus, I think, growing 9% in the fourth quarter. I was quite surprised because you should have had the positive impact of comp from China as well as the strong sell-in that you did in Thiamidol.

So can you say how much -- how China was growing in the quarter. What happened maybe in other regions if it was not the issue in China? And then how should we think about that region going forward?

So Celine, I will answer your question related to the impact on costing. So as you might imagine, we are currently protected at least in the current quarter, to some extent also in the next quarter through the contracts that we have, which is good. Immediate impact, as I already mentioned, obviously, on logistics, clearly, and we are managing that.

Yes, as we are looking into, obviously, contract negotiations for the back half, we will start to see some pressure there. We are looking at various scenarios. I cannot give you here numbers at the moment because it is very fluid. And of course, we will need to then make plans on how to offset those. It will be looking at everything, including, to be honest, pricing that we will need to look at for the back half if this continues.

Your second question, Celine, as you know very well, China is not a big part of our business, at least on the NIVEA and Eucerin in France. So the fact that we are growing double digit in China is obviously very important for us. But we have also a big part of the business, which is done in Southeast Asia, where we are suffering from the same issue that we had in other part of the world with NIVEA being done on core.

So the good news, as I mentioned, that we are back to growth on face care with the launch of the sachet glow. We have also some local issue. Thailand is obviously impacted by the border conflicts with Cambodia. Thailand is a very big country for us. We don't sell in some big areas of Thailand. We have also a big pressure from local brands in Indonesia. So I would say in the good side, you have a very strong business in Northeast Asia and India, double digit.

Low side, you have the Thailand and you have Indonesia. This is why all in all, you end up with plus 1.1%, knowing also, as I mentioned, that we are also destocking further in China. We want to be extremely by the books in terms of stocking in the brick-and-mortar La Prairie China. So we have also managed to reduce our stock to the absolute best situation possible in the first quarter in order to embrace also the coming launches in Q2 and Q3.

Sorry, just to follow up. Can you give me what exactly the number is for China? Because like double digit seems to be for Eucerin. So what is China all inclusive La Prairie, Eucerin and NIVEA? And then can you explain the Middle East impact that you saw in Q1 for 1 month? And what should we expect for the coming quarter?

Okay, good. So in China, we're doing pretty well. We have a very strong NIVEA growth. We are growing NIVEA at plus -- India, we're in India, plus 18% net sales, gaining market share on every category.

You might remember that we launched Luminous. Luminous has got a very good start. We launched a specific galenics with tubes in order to be accessible for the majority of consumers. So we are already a pretty good market share. We're also relaunching our core business. NIVEA Soft. India is the #1 country in the world for NIVEA Soft. We are gaining 5 points market share, which is pretty -- so you're asking about China or India, Celine?

China.

China. Sorry, my mistake. Sorry, sorry. My mistake. So China, we are growing in -- on NIVEA at plus 22%, and we're growing on Eucerin at plus 87%. So if you look at China NIVEA, the biggest part of the growth is coming from face care. I know this is a category we have been launching with Thiamidol. We are going on NIVEA face care at 71%, gaining more than 2 points market share, which is very big for us on NIVEA.

Eucerin is flying. Eucerin, we are growing at 87%, so which means that we have already, after only 6 months on the market, we -- our euro product, which is the Thiamidol serum is the #1 derma anti-pigment serum on the market. So we are extremely happy with Eucerin and I'm very, very optimistic with NIVEA.

And the last information was La Prairie, the retail sales, we are at plus 12%, and this is the fifth quarter in a row that we are growing double digit in China. So this is a mix of both brick-and-mortar and also a very strong success online and particularly with Douyin, which is TikTok.

Okay. And Middle East?

Middle East. Do we have the figures of Middle East evolution? We are -- so Middle East is 3% of our sales. If you look at the total, and we are at minus 50% in Middle East. So we are not so much suffering...

50%?

50%, 5-0 in Middle East for NIVEA and Eucerin. It's a small business for La Prairie. We are not suffering in sellout. That's a good news because we've been able to find ways to stock the retailer in due time. We are suffering in net sales, so which means that no issue on the consumption on the sellout, but we hope to be able to continue to find ways. We are extremely creative using all the means you can imagine to drive our product to Middle East.

So we are using the other routes like everybody is using [ Salala, Core Fegan, Yeda]. We are rerouting as much as we can to be sure that we can serve our consumers. So again, nobody can say what will happen, especially now today, but we have found ways to serve our consumers as much as we can.

Thank you, Celine. Then the next one is David Hayes from Jefferies.

Just to quickly follow up on that. Just that minus 50% Middle East, I guess, that's March you're talking about. Is that right rather than the quarter? Just to clarify that first.

Yes.

The 2 questions I have, just again sort of reconciliation. So 2nd of March, you reported the full year, you guided to low single-digit decline in the quarter is gone -- first quarter. Obviously, you did mid-single-digit decline. You talked about the Middle East circa 50 basis points.

So I'm still struggling to see what happened in the month of March that was not expected? I guess the SAC dynamic, the La Prairie travel retail dynamic, all of that would have been known. So just trying to still reconcile why there was that underperformance relative to what you expected 5 or so weeks ago.

And then secondly, on the profitability and delivering on the margin, there's a very big contribution last year, EUR 90 million in other income and expenses that is within the underlying margin. I think a big chunk of that was a reversal of provisions. So I just wonder whether you can give us any visibility or guidance on what that number looks like this year in terms of delivering on the operating margin guide, whether that's going to be a similar number or even bigger potentially, which helps with the profit delivery.

I'll take the first question, and Astrid will answer the second one. Very simple, 2 news, which we're not expecting. One, as you mentioned, the Middle East crisis. So we were not expecting to lose sales in this part of the emerging market. The second element, we got tremendous pressure from some retailers to close the deal before the quarter according to their expectations. I didn't want to accept that. So I don't want to decrease our prices. So we refused that, which impacted obviously March.

In terms of profitability, David, obviously, we manage our SOI overall. We are actively managing also that line of the SOI, and that is built into our guidance. Thank you.

Then the next question is from Guillaume Delmas of UBS.

A couple of questions for me, please, both on NIVEA actually. The first one is on the NIVEA recalibration strategy. Vincent, can you maybe shed some light on the marketing support you are planning behind this initiative? Because I think your margin outlook seems to signal relatively flat A&P spend, both as a percentage of sales and in absolute terms. So just wondering how you will make sure you get the maximum traction on all these initiatives under NIVEA recalibration.

And then my second question, it's still on NIVEA, but the brand declining by 7% in Q1. Could you maybe share by how much volumes contracted in the quarter? And which key categories, regions you are seeing the most pronounced volume share losses? And still on the volume point, I mean, what does it do to your capacity utilization and more broadly to your operational leverage?

On your first question, if you -- you might remember that what I explained also that the face care category is extremely expensive in terms of working media. So you have to -- when you do a launch, you have to spend at least [ 10% ] of the net sales in marketing budget, which is what we did for Luminous and Epicelline. But overall, you are clearly above 40% of your net sales in working media, while the other categories are much cheaper.

If you look at body care, if you put at deo, you are more into the high single digit or low double single digits -- low double digits. So in fact, rebalancing part of this extra investment on face care on deo and body is already making a huge difference on deo and body without impacting so strongly the investment you put on face care. This is what we have been doing.

We started to do that in September on deo in Europe, and you saw already the results. We are doing that also in emerging markets since September on body, and it is also paying off. So we believe that with a pretty stable marketing budget, just by having this rebalancing, we can have a pretty nice effect on the sell-out.

And again, this is what we are seeing in both regions on the 2 major categories, which are deo and body.

I think Astrid, you take the second one.

Sure. So Guillaume, on NIVEA, it is primarily -- the decline is primarily driven by volume. And we do see -- as you would have seen also from the regional chart and impact pretty much across all of the regions.

We do have some bright spots in certain countries, but from a regional perspective, it's quite broad, kind of reflecting also what we have showed you, obviously, from a marketing -- market development, which is quite global in terms of the development of our mass market.

Then the next question is from Olivier Nicolai from Goldman Sachs.

Just on Europe, competition has been intensifying, particularly in Germany. We talked about Mixa last quarter, but you also have now Korean brands entering the market aggressively. What is the risk to your market share in Germany specifically, but in Europe in general? And do you think that you can maintain share with NIVEA? And then I guess it's a bit early, but do you see any sign of consumer weakness in Europe so far?

Sure, Olivier. On Europe, yes, Mixa and the Korean brands took market share away from us, and this is also why we reacted already in September by putting more investment into the core categories, which are body on one side and which are accessible face care on the other side.

So we are expecting -- we have not yet regaining market share in Germany. We are a strong plan on NIVEA Soft. We have strong plan on the NIVEA Repair Care, which is also an answer to the brand you are mentioning. We're also coming with a much more ambitious plan on affordable face care, launching a new line soon. We expect also to be able to fight against these brands.

And also, we are coming with a very smart innovation. We just launched NIVEA Sun Stick coming from Korea, which is clearly one of the best seller we have been putting on the market in sun care. So also leveraging, we have also our own expertise in Korea, also leveraging what we know from Korea.

The good news that we clearly see and we have some kind of long-term view on the market, we see that those Korean brands are not really sustainable. They are not even strong in Korea. So they go up and down. So they take market share away from us, but after they disappear. So we just have to be smarter. And this is, for example, one of the thing we are doing in Eastern Europe. We'll be able to be much more visible on shelf. We have also been extremely aggressive in terms of influencers.

So we are learning from those brands without trying to copy them. So we are not yet positive in Germany, but I'm pretty optimistic starting this quarter that we see some good results in those categories.

Thank you, Olivier. Then the next one is Misha Omanadze from BNP Paribas Exane.

I have 2, please. So first, you mentioned that you may be looking at pricing actions to offset input cost pressures in H2. Does your full year guidance of flat to slightly positive growth for Consumer already embed an assumption of some pricing benefiting the second half?

And the second question would be on growth by brands. I know you don't guide specifically, but if you could maybe just comment directionally what you expect for each of the brands for Q2 and the full year?

Misha, I will take your first question. So we are currently working through various scenarios on the impact of our costing. We have not built those into our guidance, and we have also not built in, obviously, the countermeasures. It's an extremely fluid situation. We're obviously looking at what that could be for the second half.

As you can imagine, it's really hard to pinpoint the exact impact, but we're managing that as much as we can again via scenarios. So neither the pricing, but neither the cost.

Your question, so I will not guide, but I think I mentioned already that we are expecting a flat to slightly increasing Q2 mostly driven by the success of Derma, but also some much better figures on La Prairie and Chantecaille and also on NIVEA.

So I would say on the year, if you look at the guidance, I'm expecting, again, strong growth with Derma, should stay the same across the year, recovery in the second semester on La Prairie, Chantecaille and finishing the year with NIVEA slightly positive, a bit in line with the market, and that should give the guidance we gave you.

Thank you, Misha. Then the next question is from Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank.

Firstly, just on the margin. Could you give a view on the cadence of margin change in the year, so H1 movement versus H2? And just why doesn't consumer need a more significant margin reset? I mean, to cement the longer-term growth, you could invest more. You're facing a lot of competition from smaller peers in the brands, you pick out more competition in EM. Why doesn't it need a more significant margin reset?

And then on the Sun season sell-in, you mentioned it's obviously a very high-margin business for you. Could you just talk about the scope of that sell-in and in particular, the move or the sell-in online -- to online distributors or retailers and offline? And is that initial sell-in the same scope as it always has been, please?

Tom, I will take your first question. So we typically have a stronger margin, EBIT margin in the first half than we have in the second half, and we expect similar in this year with obviously a stronger first half versus the second half. Again, we will see what impacts we do see from the Middle East. Again, the attempt or the ambition is to offset those impacts.

And in terms of your question around whether or not we need an even stronger margin reset. Look, this is the plan we have made. We feel like we can with this plan, deliver on the guidance we have committed to. We are starting to see some green shoots, as we've mentioned also in our presentation, also seeing the sellout moving in the right direction. We're not yet happy completely about, obviously, how strong that is, but we do think we will see continued impact from all the changes we are making.

To your second question...

I was just going to say on the -- sorry, Vincent. The change year-on-year in margin rather than obviously the seasonality, but the year-on-year change in margin, are you expecting -- how are you expecting that to progress? Sorry, Vincent.

Yes, it will be a similar impact throughout the year. We don't see it -- Thank you.

Question on sun care. We are ready. We have done the sell-in, which is in line with last year. What is the good news for us is that we're doing better in the emerging markets. Last year, the success was really more driven by Europe. So at this stage, sell-in, again, sell-in driven, we are good in everywhere.

So again, what we are expecting is the sun, but we are ready. We have also a very strong plan with influencers. We are also, as I said, new products, which I think will be interesting also for Gen Z. It's something we are willing to do this year. So more to come. As you know, it's starting now and the sell-out will be clearly in Q2 and I hope to be able to share some good figures at the end of this quarter.

Thank you, Tom. And then the next one is Fulvio Cazzol from Berenberg.

My question, which is on the investment rebalancing. Vincent, I remember when you became CEO a few years ago, you highlighted the strategy change away from the decentralized model that Beiersdorf had previously. At the time, you highlighted the inconsistency across countries on product launches, on marketing practices, which basically resulted in lower returns from investments in categories like body wash, sun, deo, et cetera.

Now it sounds like you are taking the business back to that more decentralized model, investing in products with lower price points that generate lower margins. So what will be different in the next few years that gives you the confidence of a better return on investments versus, say, 6, 10 years ago?

Fulvio, this is the right question, and thank you for asking. I think we clearly -- the situation in 2021 was indeed that we were ultra localized. So every country was doing what they wanted in terms of launches, in terms of advertising campaign, in terms of support of key initiatives. And we did up into a kind of patchwork of different look and feel, different visualization of the brand and clearly no return on investment.

So clearly, on top of the direction into premium face care, I went into a very strong globalization, and I went too far. I was clearly -- it's obvious when you look at the results. I went too far into the globalization because there are some local franchises, which suffered from the fact that they were no longer invested. So are we back to what we were before? Not at all.

What we are talking about is the localization in a frame, which means that clearly, we are controlling everything from the center. So when, for example, I'm talking about the new support towards some local franchises in emerging market, it is driven by Hamburg with our own R&D organization, our own marketing organization, and we don't give the right to everybody to do what they want. I mentioned 5 countries, and it's not just a coincidence.

We consider that countries like Brazil, India, China, Japan and the U.S. are different and that they deserve a specific treatment, and we expect the neighboring countries to follow exactly the same logic. So what I do in Brazil, I was last week in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. I can tell you that what we are doing in Brazil will be followed by Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Colombia and all the other countries.

The second element also is important. We are leveraging the global franchises, but accepting local execution. I gave the example of a sachet, which seems to be clearly not rocket science. But the fact that we are able to have the exact same formula with the exact same concentration of Thiamidol with different galenic is something new.

Yes, you have the product you know the dispenser in Europe, which is pretty premium. But you have a tube in India, you have a sachet in Thailand, and you have something even more premium in China with NIVEA Thiamidol. So we are much more, I would say, open in terms of Galenics, which are following -- which are using the same global platform.

And last but not least, in terms of communication, together with Publicis, which is our global agency on both NIVEA, Eucerin and Hansaplast, we have created some specific hubs in specific countries and those 5 countries I were mentioning, where we have the global marketing team and the Publicis team working together in order to be sure that what we are doing locally is also consistent with the global look and feel of the brand and the way we want to push forward our initiatives.

So it's clearly more freedom. It's also more ability to the countries to test new ideas, but it is clearly control. We don't want to come back to the kind of food salad we had in the past with so many different look and feels and different executions.

Thanks, Fulvio. And the next one is Fon Udomsilpa from RBC.

Just a few questions on NIVEA Body Care, please. So you gave color on regional performance for body care, but could you confirm the market share momentum for NIVEA Body Care globally? And tying to that, with the early results you've seen on the rebalancing strategy, momentum in the Body Care in many markets improving and with the lower media costs that you mentioned, has your view towards investment in the body care category change?

Does improved momentum give you confidence in increasing investment for the rest of the year and how much flexibility to do so considering higher cost inflation in the second half?

I think I shared a few examples already in the call, and they are very important for us. It's the emerging market body. This is also the emerging market face and the European deodorants category. So they are products.

There are categories where we started the rebalancing in September. It's, I would say, easier in emerging markets because we have a lot of local franchises that we just had to revamp, and this is what we've been doing. And we see -- and this is really important for us, we saw clearly that we are gaining market share in those regions.

Globally, we have been gaining market share for the first time, if you look at the total NIVEA brand in January. And this was the first time we are gaining market share on NIVEA global since end of '24. So pretty good news. We are slightly down in February, but it's really, I mean, just a few base points.

So overall, we see clearly a dynamic which is positive, which is very positive for deodorants, as I mentioned, which is positive for body, which is not yet as positive as we expected on face care. So face care is clearly the category will push forward. There are some launches coming in affordable face care.

As I mentioned, I was last week in Brazil, we have a fantastic line called [ Facial, ] which has a 25% market share. We are revamping this line with new initiatives, new ingredients also, not only the one coming from Brazil, but also some very well-known ingredients. So all of that should materialize in the Q2, Q3. So hopefully, I will also get the same kind of growth figures in the months to come.

Thank you, Fon. Then the next one is Eno Tilly from Morgan Stanley.

The first one was on the NIVEA Epicelline launch. I'm just wondering if you're seeing any cannibalization in the Eucerin Epicelline product because just looking at the last couple of months, there seems to have been a bit of a slowdown in Eucerin in Europe.

And then on the second part, on the areas where you've seen improved sellout in NIVEA, could you just give any steer on the magnitude of the gross margin differential of the parts of NIVEA that are starting to perform better with the rebalancing strategy?

On your first question, absolutely 0 cannibalization. That's a very good news. It's particularly easy, I would say, in Europe because we are not sold in the same retail environment. You find NIVEA Epicelline in mass market, you find Eucerin Epicelline pharmacies. But even in regions and partly the case for the U.K., but also for emerging markets where we are sold in the same drugstores, we have absolutely 0 effect on the sellout.

Epicelline is really doing extremely well on Eucerin. We are also adding new SKUs. We are enlarging the routine, so coming with a day and night product. And NIVEA Epicelline also will benefit also from the same kind of addition. What is great is I mentioned that in the call that the repurchase rates are absolutely amazing for NIVEA. We are reaching level between 35% and 48% depending on the countries, which is even above Eucerin, which is also more expensive. So we feel pretty safe with both products.

You have also to remember that we decided also not to launch NIVEA Epicelline everywhere. So for example, it's clearly a brand which is skewed towards Europe. We didn't launch NIVEA Epicelline in countries like Mexico and Brazil because it's too expensive. So we obviously -- this is -- the field is totally open for Eucerin, and this is also where we are reaching very, very high level of net sales market share and repurchase.

On the second question, Astrid?

Yes. So gross margin, as you can imagine, across our various categories is quite different subcategory by subcategory and tends to be obviously quite a bit lower on our personal categories than our skin care categories.

That said, when we're looking at what we call margin 2, so the margin, including also our marketing spend, we see a much more even picture. And in fact, there our face care business has some of the lowest margin too. So as we are rebalancing that, we can manage this margin to pool and thereby managing our profitability.

Thank you. Then we have 2 more questions. First, we have [ Annelie Payman ] from Thomson Reuters.

I have some questions on what oil price is the forecast based? And has the company taken any specific measures due to the higher gasoline or kerosene costs, for example, allowing more working from home, reducing business travel by plane. And last, do you have to pay any tariffs in the U.S.A.? And are you now claiming back them?

Thank you so much, [ Annelie ], for your question. So we are in the midst of working on our forecast. And as I mentioned, we have various scenarios that we're looking at. Obviously, one scenario with a quite high oil price than kind of a middle ground and one where it doesn't quite return to the previous place pre this crisis, but significantly lower than what we're seeing this minute, and we're working towards what that means then in terms of the actions.

What I can tell you that we anyhow have very much watched T&E and so on or travel cost over the last years, absolutely. We continue to want to save there. And that's what's also contributed to managing our overheads quite well over the last years and is a continued impact even in this year. In terms of your questions on tariffs, as we've mentioned in the previous calls, our impact from the U.S. tariffs has been quite limited. We are, in that sense, more lucky, I'll call it, given our footprint of producing quite a bit of our sales in the U.S. itself or in Mexico and thereby, the impact was low. Of course, we will still use what we can in terms of refunding and so on to offset the limited impact we have had.

Thank you, [ Annelie. ] And then the next one is Ulrike Dauer from Dow Jones.

I hope you can hear me properly.

Yes.

Okay. I have one question related to the Middle East. What would be the maximum impact on margin that could you envisage in your worst-case scenarios for the full year? And also in terms of retail related, so I better understand, what was the problem with the U.S. department stores?

And you mentioned delays of innovations getting in stores. Is that related -- could that threaten your innovation timing this year?

On the Middle East, Ulrike, we are not sharing a max impact because to be honest, we really want to manage that impact. And again, it can have a substantial impact on our cost, which we will try to find measures to obviously offset. Given the size of our business in the Middle East, the direct impact will be quite low, but we know, obviously, this could lead to a much more global impact and then obviously have a much larger impact on us.

Department store. The issue on department store is sold. We -- I mean, it's public knowledge that axis Avenue was in a difficult situation, and we were not selling anything to Saks Avenue until we had an agreement on the other dues. Where they were still selling in store and they still had some product they could sell, but we are not selling to them. And this is now over.

We have a deal with them, and we are back absolutely back to normal. We are selling La Prairie and Chantecaille in each and every Saks store in the U.S. No issue on that.

Okay. And you mentioned the pricing discussions with European retailers. And at the same time that some innovations were not getting in the store or there was a delay between delivery and getting into the stores. Is that threatening or could that threaten somehow your innovation timing this year?

No. No, no. The only -- what happened regularly when we have some customer conflicts. And again, it's mostly about NIVEA, it's mostly about France and Germany. There is this kind of black mail that might delay some innovation, but that's normal business. Retailers are smart enough to bet on the right products. So we are not suffering from that. We are able to put the right product on shelf when we want them to be on shelf.

Thank you, Ulrike, and thank you, everyone. That was our last question. This concludes our conference call. Beiersdorf's next Investor Relations event will be the release of our half year results on August 5, 2026. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf, and look forward to seeing you back here again in the summer. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our full year 2025 results conference. I'm pleased to present an overview of our performance, together with Astrid, who will later provide a detailed financial review.

But before we begin, I want to touch on the situation in the Middle East. In situations like this, the safety of our employees and their families is our highest priority. Teams are in place in the regions to offer assistance and support on the ground, and we are in close communication with them.

Given the volatility of the situation, it is too early to assess any potential impact on our business. We hope for a peaceful solution soon.

Let me now turn to our full year 2025 results. 2025 was a year that demanded a lot from us. Economic and geopolitical uncertainties, shifting consumer behavior and continued trade disruptions negatively affected market dynamics. Skin care market growth slowed to levels not seen in recent history, with particularly strong effects in the emerging markets region.

These conditions shaped and challenge our performance more than anticipated at the start of the year. Even so, we continue to make progress in several important areas and where we fell short, we took immediate action. At the same time, 2025 showed that the core elements of our strategy remain effective.

Our focus on science-based innovation, our global footprint and expansion into new markets, our culture of care and responsibility. This provided important stability throughout the year. In a challenging market environment, we were able to maintain our position as the best-performing skin care company globally for the third year in a row.

Once again, our Derma business was an undisputed success, driven by innovation, white space expansion and strong scientific credibility. La Prairie showed initial signs of improvement towards the end of the year, but the recovery remains fragile in a volatile luxury market and disruptions in the retail landscape negatively impact Q1 2026. And while our skin care focus strategy has delivered on many fronts, the most recent performance of NIVEA requires a strategic rebalancing.

We have taken decisive actions, laying the foundation for restoring momentum and returning our business to a more attractive and profitable growth trajectory. In 2025, the global skin care market slowed significantly, decelerating from mid-single-digit growth in 2024 to around 1.5% to 2%. This slowdown intensified as the year progressed and was particularly visible in regions that have driven strong growth in previous years, including Eastern Europe and emerging markets.

Pricing normalized after inflation-driven increases, geopolitical tensions influenced consumer sentiment and consumers became more cautious and increasingly selective in their routines. While Beiersdorf was affected by this market slowdown in 2025 and continues to feel its impact in 2026, we were still able to deliver solid growth in a significantly more challenging environment.

NIVEA ended the year with an organic sales growth of 0.9%, reflecting the impact of weaker market dynamics, a repositioning of our business in China as well as a back-end loaded innovation pipeline. Our Derma business delivered double-digit growth for the fifth year in a row, supported by breakthrough innovations and successful expansion into white spaces.

Our Health Care business continued to perform strongly, with close to double-digit growth, providing further evidence for our innovation-driven strategy. At La Prairie, organic sales declined by 4.5% in 2025. The performance improved quarter after quarter, but market conditions remain volatile. Tesa delivered moderate growth of almost 2%, driven by a strong performance in the electronics business.

Altogether, our skin care business grew by 3.7%, clearly ahead of the market. Once again, we outperformed our key competitors in this segment and remained the best-performing skin care company globally. This performance underscores the strength of our skin care expertise and its ability to deliver sustained outperformance.

Let's dive a little deeper into our Derma business. The undisputable success story of our Derma brands Eucerin and Aquaphor continued in 2025. Net sales reached a record EUR 1.5 billion, approaching close to 20% of consumer net sales, supported by continuous market share gains in a market growing only at low single-digit rates.

In Q4, facing a tough comparison with the Epicelline launch in the prior year, Derma still grew by nearly 10%. Derma growth in 2025 was broad-based across all regions. In Europe, our home market, Derma delivered an impressive 8.3% organic sales growth as Epicelline continued to drive the performance.

In North America, our largest Derma market, we grew by nearly 9%, an outstanding results driven by Face Care and Radiant Tone, our Thiamidol product in the U.S. In emerging markets, at 16.3% organic sales growth, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil were the key performance drivers.

In addition, India, domestic China and Japan were important white spaces that we expanded into. We also continue to outperform competition. This is a testament to the success of our science-based growth strategy of launching breakthrough innovations and successfully expanding into white space opportunities. Our innovation, our hero ingredients, Thiamidol and Epicelline are continuing their success stories.

Thiamidol, in its eighth year, continued to grow at double-digit rates. In early 2025, we launched it in the U.S. and later in the year, we brought this innovation to the domestic Chinese market. Epicelline, our anti-aging breakthrough ingredient continued its successful rollout across Europe and in emerging markets.

Our Derma innovation pipeline remains strong and sets industry standards. The entry into white spaces has unlocked new growth opportunities for industry. Let me share a few examples. In India, Eucerin's launch generated strong momentum. It was one of the first global dermocosmetics brands to enter the market and quickly became a top dermatologist recommendation.

In China, following regulatory approval, Eucerin's Thiamidol serum was launched on the domestic market and has become the #1 derma anti-pigment serum. And in Japan, we introduced Eucerin, marking another important milestone. As the world's third largest cosmetics market, expectations for quality and innovation are extremely high.

For this debut, we developed a premium anti-aging line, tailored to local consumer needs. Our Health Care brands, Hansaplast and Elastoplast delivered one of the strongest years in history with organic sales growth of more than 9%. The launch of our Second Skin Plus Protection plaster illustrates how we continue to drive innovation even in mature categories. This advanced technology offers superior healing and protection. It is setting a new benchmark in wound care and resonates strongly with consumers.

We continue to invest in research and development to reinforce our leadership in this segment with new innovations coming soon. NIVEA faced a particularly challenging year, navigating difficult market conditions and delivering growth below our initial expectations.

There were 3 key factors behind this development. First, the market slowdown was more severe than we expected. Second, we completed a comprehensive repositioning of our business in China, which temporarily affected our performance negatively. And third, most of our major innovations were scheduled for the second half of the year, which limited momentum early on.

In 2025, the mass market for skin and personal care products slowed significantly. The decline was most notable in emerging markets, where value growth rates more than half versus 2024 and further deteriorated throughout the year with volume growth turning negative in Q4. Skin and personal care were most effective than other beauty categories. This had a direct impact on NIVEA's performance over the year. The speed and scale of the market downturn exceeded our initial assumptions, requiring adjustment to our guidance during the year.

In China, we successfully completed a fundamental repositioning of NIVEA to prepare the brand for long-term success in this key market. Our strategy in China is clear. We aim to win through innovation in skin care. Therefore, we shift our focus away from price-sensitive personal care categories and partners, prioritizing premium skin care and accelerating growth through digital-first channels.

This involved streamlining our portfolio, optimizing distribution and tailoring innovation to local consumer needs. These measures were completed by the end of third quarter and NIVEA is now better positioned to compete in China's dynamic market and capture future opportunities.

Subsequently, we launched Thiamidol under NIVEA in the domestic Chinese market, leading to impressive double-digit growth rates of NIVEA in the fourth quarter. Our innovation pipeline in 2025 was strong but the major launches were concentrated late in the year. As a result, the contribution for innovation to our full year performance was limited, particularly in the first half.

The rollout of breakthrough innovations such as Epicelline began to contribute in the latter part of the year, especially in Q4. In 2025, we launched Epicelline on the mass market. Our NIVEA Cellular epigenetic serum represented the strongest NIVEA face care rollout in our history. The selling performance has been strong and in line with our expectations, reflecting robust retailer demand and effective distribution.

We also saw very good sellout momentum. The product quickly reached #1 positions at leading retailers and continues to be the #1 serum across Europe. Reliable data and consumer repurchase rate is not yet available, given the recent launch.

This will be a key metric to monitor in the coming months to assess long-term consumer loyalty and the sustained performance of Epicelline in the mass market. Our Luxury brand, La Prairie represents a smaller share of our business, but it remains a strategically important part of our portfolio. The full year remained below 2024 levels. But as we had expected, the business showed a sequential improvement quarter-over-quarter, growing plus 3.8% in Q4. This was mainly driven by more favorable deployments in China, particularly in e-commerce. At the same time, the luxury market remains highly volatile with persistent weakness in the U.S. and in travel retail markets.

Ongoing disruptions in the U.S. department store landscape as well as travel retail in China are expected to negatively impact our performance in the first year of 2026.

With that, let me hand over to Astrid to walk you through tesa and our financials.

Thank you, Vincent, and good morning from my side as well. Let me start with the performance of our tesa business. In 2025, tesa delivered organic sales growth of 1.8% in a challenging global economic environment, characterized by tariff disruptions and ongoing challenges in the automotive industry.

Within our industry segment, electronics was again the main growth driver, with particularly strong results in Greater China and Asia Pacific. The product ranges from mounting front and back modules, solutions for battery bonding and conductive tapes were further developed and converted into customer-specific solutions.

The automotive business closed the year broadly in line with the prior year. Ongoing volatility in Europe and North America continued to weigh on the performance, while China and Latin America delivered growth supported by successful customer projects. Printing and Packaging Solutions also recorded year-on-year growth.

The performance was driven by expanded activities in splicing tapes and flexographic printing, with notable contributions from North and Latin America and continued positive development in China.

Finally, the Consumer segment delivered growth despite a challenging market environment, especially in Europe. E-commerce showed strong year-on-year development and made a meaningful contribution to the overall result.

Let me now walk you through our 2025 financial performance. Overall, we delivered a stable performance in a challenging market environment with organic sales growth of 2.4%.

We also made further progress on our profitability. Our EBIT margin increased to 14.0%, up 10 basis points versus last year, reflecting continued cost discipline and ongoing operational improvements. Earnings per share increased to EUR 4.25, up 4.9% compared to 2024, driven by improvements in our profitability and our tax rate.

This outcome underlines the financial stability of our business in a year marked by significant external pressures. These results provide a strong foundation as we recalibrate our NIVEA strategy, continue to innovate and drive sustainable long-term growth.

Let's now turn to the segment level performance. In 2025, Beiersdorf Consumer business net sales grew to EUR 8.176 billion at an organic growth rate of 2.5%. Adverse foreign exchange effects, including a softer U.S. dollar resulted in a lower nominal growth of 0.02%.

Profitability improved with EBIT, excluding special factors, growing to EUR 1.108 billion, a 20 basis points margin increase driven by disciplined cost management despite cost pressures on our gross margin. Our tesa business recorded organic growth of 1.8% during the same period, closing the year with net sales of EUR 1.676 billion.

Due to unfavorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales slightly declined by negative 0.7%. The EBIT margin, excluding special factors, was 16.1%, in line with our guidance.

Now let's take a closer look at our performance across the different regions. In Western Europe, we achieved robust organic sales growth of 1.8%, particularly in key markets like the U.K., Italy and Spain. As always, it is important to highlight that our luxury travel business is also included in this region and had a negative impact of nearly 100 basis points.

Our business in Eastern Europe declined by 2.3%, driven by softer markets and overexposure to personal care, retailer disruptions as well as intensified competition with local brands, particularly in our key market, Poland.

The Americas regions closed the year with sales growth of 3.1%. This good performance was largely attributable to the outstanding results of our Derma brands in the United States and in Canada at high single-digit growth rates as well as the continued strong growth of NIVEA in Canada.

At the same time, Latin America experienced a notable slowdown, particularly in the Personal Care segment. As a result, our softer NIVEA sales in key markets such as Brazil and Argentina, weighed on our overall regional performance, while Derma sales grew at double-digit rates.

The Africa, Asia, Australia region recorded 4.5% organic sales growth. India was the most important positive contributor to this growth next to Japan. Our NIVEA repositioning activities in China negatively impacted this region in the first 9 months of 2025.

Following the successful completion of our repositioning activities, China contributed significantly to increasing the region's organic sales growth to 9.3% in the fourth quarter.

Now let's take a look at the development of our consumer gross margin. Our Consumer gross margin decreased by 70 basis points year-on-year from 61.0% in 2024 to 60.3% in 2025. Pricing contributed positively, adding 30 basis points, underscoring the continued strength of our brands and our ability to partly offset cost inflation despite a more moderate pricing environment. Increased costs driven by higher raw material prices and limited volume growth weighed on our gross margin.

Mix effects positively contributed 40 basis points, primarily driven by the continued outperformance of our Derma business. Lastly, unfavorable foreign exchange effects contributed minus 50 basis points.

Let me conclude our financial overview by highlighting the key elements of our group income statement for the year. Our group's net sales grew slightly to EUR 9.852 billion in 2025. Our group gross margin declined to 57.7% with tesa experiencing similar cost and foreign exchange pressures as our consumer business.

Our marketing and selling expenses remained roughly at the previous year's level, reflecting a slight increase in the Consumer and a slight decrease in the tesa business. We continue to drive strong support for our brands with consumer-facing activities, which we were able to increase in 2025, while also driving effectiveness and efficiency of our marketing expense. As in previous years, we have taken the decision to continue to increase our R&D spending, reflecting a strong commitment to fostering breakthrough innovations that will shape our future.

At the same time, we maintained a disciplined approach to our general and administrative costs, leading to a reduction of these expenses in 2025. Our EBIT, excluding special factors, grew to EUR 1.378 billion, a 10 basis points EBIT margin increase in line with our guidance. Lower special factors as well as an improved effective tax rate were additional drivers to increase our profit after tax to EUR 955 million or EUR 4.25 per share, a EUR 0.20 increase compared to 2024.

Back to you, Vincent.

Thank you, Astrid. After 5 years in our roles, this is the right moment to take a closer look at what has driven our performance and how effective our strategy has been. Over the past 5 years, we increased net sales by almost 30%, reaching a level of EUR 9.9 billion in 2025.

Despite the slowdown in 2025, we continue to be the best-performing skin care company, outgrowing our key competitors in this important category. EBIT, excluding special factors, also improved significantly by almost 40%, a clear proof of our commitment to profitable growth.

Our top line outperformance was fueled by 3 key pillars: First, breakthrough innovations. Science-based research and development are at the heart of what we do. Second, successful expansion into white spaces, both in terms of categories and markets. And third, a strong and growing e-commerce business. We have been growing double digit in e-commerce for more than 5 years in a row and gaining market share.

In 2025, we generated 17% of our net sales online. Let's start with innovation. One of the clearest examples is Thiamidol. This highly effective ingredient has been cascaded across our brands and markets, the latest additions being Chantecaille as well as the U.S. and China.

Since I started at Beiersdorf, we have turned the Thiamidol franchise into a EUR 500 million business. We are continuing to grow double digit and are gaining market share again, supported by high recognition of the ingredient in the scientific community.

Thiamidol was validated by a scientific consensus of 10 world-leading dermatologists as the only dermocosmetics solution for the management of hyperpigmentation. Another breakthrough innovation is Epicelline, a game changer in anti-age, and while everybody speaks about longevity, our epigenetics technology already provides a solution. After its success in the Derma segment, we launched Epicelline to the mass market through NIVEA. This reflects the same principle as Thiamidol, developing highly effective ingredients based on strong science and systematically making them accessible across brands and markets. Microbiome research at S-Biomedic is the next frontier of our innovation pipeline. What started as a venture capital investment and R&D partnership several years ago has turned into the development of a breakthrough microbiome innovation for acne-prone skin.

We developed PROBIOM8 to correct blemishes from acne-prone skin using the first-ever skin-native probiotics. With significant results proven in clinical studies, it is planned to be launched under Eucerin DERMOPURE CLINICAL in the second half of this year. Evaluated by hundreds of dermatologists and tested on thousands of consumers, PROBIOM8 significantly improves acne-prone skin with no side effects.

More to come later this year, stay tuned. Turning to the second pillar of our strategy, expansion into white spaces. We have focused on the defined set of key markets and made strong progress in the U.S., Brazil, India, China and Japan.

Let me briefly zoom in on the U.S., Brazil and India. In all 3 markets, our white space strategy has translated into measurable progress. In the U.S., we launched Eucerin Sun followed by Eucerin Face and introduced Thiamidol in 2025. This strengthened our foothold in one of the world's most competitive dermatological skin care markets. Our Consumer business in North America has reached EUR 1 billion. In Brazil, Eucerin advanced from a niche positioning to one of the leading players in the market. Within just 5 years, we managed to move from #15 in the market to a #4 position.

And India remains a clear success story for us. While we been present in India with NIVEA and our Health Care business for a long time, we managed to more than double our business within the last 5 years. This was driven by outstanding performance of NIVEA as well as the launch of our full skin care portfolio, including Eucerin, La Prairie and Chantecaille.

Our Derma business has fully delivered on our strategy. Since 2021, we almost doubled our business, reaching sales of EUR 1.5 billion in 2025. Even in the slowing Derma market last year, our Eucerin and Aquaphor brands demonstrated double-digit growth. Also, NIVEA, the largest skin care brand in the world grew by an impressive 34% over the last 5 years.

We succeeded in regaining credibility in face care through Thiamidol and Epicelline. However, the required investment has not allowed us to maintain the right advertising focus on other categories. And through our exclusive global innovation program, we lost some momentum on core local ranges in some key countries. As a result, we were not able to outperform the market to the same extent as in prior years, and NIVEA's growth slowed significantly in 2025.

We have, therefore, taken decisive action to recalibrate our strategy for NIVEA to restore the brand's growth trajectory, which is a key priority for '26 and 2027. What exactly does this recalibration mean?

We are rebalancing our NIVEA strategy along 3 pillars. First, we are broadening our focus by strengthening categories next to face care, such as deodorants and body care. So going next to major global franchises, we'll support important local product lines by giving key markets such as China, the U.S., India, Japan and Brazil, greater flexibility in local execution.

And third, we are putting more effort behind accessible face care products. Let me dive a little deeper into each of the pillars. NIVEA already has a strong foundation in categories such as deodorant and body care. Building on this base, we are shifting parts of our investment in R&D, marketing and new launches in these categories. By broadening our range, we are strengthening NIVEA's position across a wider set of segments and creating additional growth opportunities. In recent years, NIVEA focused strongly on global launches and centralized campaigns.

Going forward, we'll continue to rely on growth innovation platforms and hero ingredients as a foundation, but give local teams greater freedom to tailor launches, products and marketing to local needs and push key local franchises. One example is LUMINOUS Glow, a successful innovation for Emerging Markets. Another one is NIVEA Facial, a key face care line in Brazil that we launched in other markets as well.

Lastly, we rebalance the focus also to popular face care products at a more accessible price range next to the premium face care lines like LUMINOUS and Epicelline. NIVEA remains an iconic yet accessible brand. Our portfolio deliberately spans from everyday essentials to premium innovations.

And as you know, the vast majority of our portfolio is priced at very accessible levels. The rebalancing of the NIVEA is underway. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we initiated a shift in our advertising and promotional spending, reallocating resources to support a broader range of categories and local initiatives.

This marked the first step in the rebalancing process. In 2026 and beyond, we are implementing a set of pipeline measures to strengthen our innovation road map. This includes breakthrough ingredient line extension on the one hand, and broader launches across categories on the other. We are fostering fast-track execution of innovation to meet current trends, and allowing for certain regional innovation tailored to local consumer needs.

These measures will take some time to show their full impact. We are confident in our ability to return NIVEA to sustain growth, and will report on our progress in each of the coming quarters. So let me turn to the outlook for our business. We own and manage some of the most iconic skin care brands in the world and operate in the highly attractive skin care market, the largest category in the beauty space.

Over decades, this market has demonstrated strong resilience and a consistent ability to recover within 1 or 2 years after periods of slowdown or decline. Our well-established and trusted brands together with our Win With Care strategy, provide a strong foundation to navigate the current market environment and to deliver sustained long-term growth.

Let us now look at our midterm guidance. In an evolving market environment, our focus remains firmly on outperforming the market. We'll do so by continuing to expand into white spaces, launching breakthrough innovations and responding dynamically to changing market conditions. A key priority will be to return NIVEA to an elevated growth trajectory through a clear action plan and targeted measures as part of our strategic rebalancing.

On top of that, the use of our cash position to pursue inorganic growth opportunities remains an important element of our strategy and should provide additional upside. We also remain committed to profitable growth in the midterm, which translates into growing EBIT at least as fast as net sales. We are convinced of the continued EBIT margin expansion potential for our business.

In light of the global market dynamics, we will not quote a specific number. We'll have to be flexible to respond to market conditions and will not sacrifice long-term value creation opportunities for short-term margin gains. While the use of cash for inorganic growth remains a core element of our capital allocation strategy, we have also strengthened our commitment to returning cash to shareholders. This is reflected in enhanced cash distribution through share buybacks and dividends.

As a next step within this framework, we are continuing to strengthen shareholder returns. The Executive and Supervisory Boards of Beiersdorf propose that the dividend for the 2025 financial year is confirmed at EUR 1 per share. The proposal will be submitted to the Annual General Meeting on April 23. Following the successful share buyback programs in 2024 and 2025, Beiersdorf will initiate a further share buyback program valued at up to EUR 750 million over a period of 2 years.

While we remain very confident in our profitable growth prospects over the mid and long term, it is important to acknowledge that market dynamics has not improved at the start of this year. We saw a clear slowdown over the course of last year, and the softer environment has continued into early 2026 without clear signs of a near-term recovery. And while we have initiated our NIVEA rebalancing strategy, the measures will take some time to become fully visible. In parallel, the luxury skin care market remains volatile.

And while improvements were visible in China in 2025, severe disruptions in the U.S. department store landscape and travel retail in China negatively impact the current performance. We view these disruptions, especially in China, travel retail, as temporarily and not a full reflection of the underlying consumer demand. Nevertheless, they will have a noticeable negative effect on our Q1 luxury performance.

Let us turn to our guidance for 2026. Against a continued challenging and volatile market environment, we expect sales to be flat to slightly growing organically across our business segments. This applies to both the Consumer and tesa segments as well as at group level. We still expect to be able to outperform the market as demonstrated in previous years.

The first quarter of 2026 is expected to land below this range at a low single-digit negative organic growth rate. While Derma is expecting to deliver another strong quarter, NIVEA's innovation momentum that positively affected Q4 2025 is less impactful this quarter. In addition, the disruptions in U.S. retail and China travel retail landscape we put significant pressure on the luxury brands in Q1.

On profitability, we expect the EBIT margin, excluding special factors in Consumer, tesa and for the group to be coming slightly below the 2025 level. This is driven by raw material cost increases, unfavorable FX and only limited fixed cost leverage on gross margin. At the same time, we'll not decrease our marketing spend proportionally as we want to ensure sufficient investment behind our brands.

This concludes our full presentation, and we are looking forward to your questions. Over to you, Christopher, for the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And we will start with Callum Elliott of Bernstein.

Hopefully, you can hear me. So my first question is on the strategic rebalance, specifically, the increased support and spending that you were talking about behind deodorants, body care, local product lines. Is that incrementing -- incremental spending vessel or just a reallocation of resources away from face care? And can you talk a bit more about when you expect to see the benefits of some of that rebalance?

And then my second question, please, is on cash conversion. You guys have the weakest cash conversion of all large cap global consumer staples companies. and it gets worse this year in 2025. I understand that there's part of this driven by strategic decisions around CapEx, et cetera, but on more executional pieces like working capital, again, we see you getting worse this year, working capital now over 10% of sales. So my question probably more for Astrid, is this cash conversion a strategic focus for you at all? And if yes, when should we expect to see improvement? And if no, why not?

Thank you, Callum. So I will take the first question. Obviously, the focus that we had on premium face care was very expensive in media. This is by far the most expensive skin care category. So what we are doing is simply to reallocate part of the spendings from premium face care into body and deo and affordable skin care. The good news is that on those categories, they are much less media intensive. So we can really develop strongly those businesses with an amount of working media and amount of promotion, which is much below what we are currently spending on the NIVEA premium face care.

Second question?

Yes. So Callum, to your question related to cash conversion, yes, it was not where we were hoping it to be this last year. There were some impacts that were related to some aging tax payment that we've made to stop the clock there, but are absolutely looking to recover.

We also had, obviously, given the very backloaded Q4, some impact, obviously, on working capital. We also had some higher inventory than we would have liked to, but we are looking to improve that. And I can promise you that it is a focus for us as a company, and we're looking to make progress in 2026.

And then the next one on the line is Celine Pannuti of JPMorgan.

So I wanted to first come back on the guidance for the year. Low single-digit negative, you said for Q1. So you mentioned the impact from the department store and travel retail. Is it possible to give us a bit of an idea of how much double-digit down will La Prairie be in Q1? And likewise, NIVEA, I would expect still it to be as well negative. Would that be the case in Q1? And does it mean that the rest of the year, you expect it to be up low single digits or thereabout? And how do we think about this when you have a tough comp in the second half?

My second question is on NIVEA, because Vincent, you are recalibrating the strategy. I was nevertheless surprised that we don't get more innovation benefit. You said that the innovation benefit in '25 was really hitting at Q4. And why don't we get that innovation benefit in H1? I appreciate you don't have the data from the repurchase rate, but like it feels like the innovation doesn't have a lasting impact. So what visibility do you have on this? And if you could also explain the -- you give more freedom to local markets to adapt. I understood when you came 4, 5 years ago that probably there was too much freedom. So can you come back and explain what's different when -- in the recalibration you're making? Sorry for long questions.

Thank you, Celine. On your first question on the Q1 2026, I think we are -- obviously, we are very optimistic regarding Derma, and this is clearly the driving force of Beiersdorf. It has been, it will be. On NIVEA and La Prairie, we have 2 different phenomena. On NIVEA first, Q4 was clearly a quarter of selling because we have tesa, as you remember. From September, this is where we had most of the innovation.

So we have done a good quarter with NIVEA, but now we have to sell out the innovation. We don't have new selling innovation coming in Q1, it's more Q2. So it's about absorbing the volumes, being sure that we drive the sellout. The good news that the first market share is positive. That's encouraging, but this is what will happen in the Q1.

On La Prairie, it's a bit specific. We are clearly seeing over the year a progress. The retail sales, the sellout is improving. We are even growing double digit in China. We are improving our figures in the U.S., growing high single digits in Europe, but we are hit by 2 phenomenas, which are not hitting only La Prairie, and you've seen that in the course of our competitors. On the one hand, the U.S. department store environment is difficult with one key retailer being on Chapter 11.

And in China, there was a change of travel retail operators of the 2 airports of Beijing and Shanghai Sunrise, which obviously has an impact on the volumes because they are -- they didn't buy in December and the new trade -- travel retail operators will buy more at the end of the quarter, beginning of Q2. So that has an impact on the selling figures of the Q1. And to give you -- to quantify that, it will be a double-digit loss, but hopefully, after looking at the good health of the sellout, we'll do a better job.

On your question on NIVEA, the recalibration in fact, is clearly taking place in September. It started by the launch of the Derma Control deodorants together with Epicelline. And then it's coming with new launches, new initiatives, which will hit the shelves starting in Q2, but more surely in H2. When you look at the launches we did in the last quarter, we are very happy with Epicelline. Epicelline is -- we said that already, but it's by far the best ever launch of NIVEA in face care.

We went immediately to a position of being the #1 serum in Europe, very, very important launch for us. We have seen the sell-in. We have seen the sellout. We are just waiting for repurchase rate. But as you know, we know pretty well the formula, because it's very close to what we launched in -- on Eucerin. Derma Control is starting well, it's a good figures in Europe. We are gaining market share in deodorants, which is something we didn't have since a long time.

So we hope to see those 2 launches developing well in Q1 and Q2. And we have also a lot of other opportunities, other launches, other activities coming in the second quarter. So yes, we'll see clearly the digestion of the selling of Q4 into Q1 and this development of the sellout. And then we should enter into a more positive dynamics, having still in mind, and this is also one of the main reason of the guidance that we are working on the skin care market, which is at 1% growth. So that's also the big change versus what we had in the past years. We are clearly in a slowing market, and this is impacting, obviously, a brand like NIVEA, which is very large, which is in multiple categories.

On your last question, Freedom, in a frame, this is the way we call it. You're absolutely right. In fact, when I took over as a CEO, I saw a NIVEA landscape, which was purely local. And it's not that it was working because we had a lot of small things in the countries, but none of them being really impactful. So I move it to a direction, which was a bit extreme, which was to globalize NIVEA. So it was successful, as I said, on franchises like LUMINOUS, Thiamidol and Epicelline, but it also was made at the expense of some strong local franchises.

We mentioned Facial in Brazil, which used to be, in fact, the basis of NIVEA skin care in some key countries. So we are not only reassessing those local franchisees as key priorities and coming with new launches. But also, we are ensuring that the countries can play with them. It's about influencers, for example, it's about specific in-store activities. It's about also advertising campaigns. We'll have some global campaigns, but we'll have also some local campaigns in China, in Japan, in India, in Brazil, in the U.S. that we believe will be better at recruiting new consumers. So that's this rebalancing. We are not back to the history, but we are just rebalancing versus the globalization that took place since 2021.

The next one is Warren Ackerman of Barclays.

It's Warren Ackerman here at Barclays. So one operational question and one strategic. The operational one is really -- can you maybe dive into Eastern Europe? I know it's been weak all year, but it really lurched down in Q4. I think it was down like 7% organically, well below consensus. So -- and I know you've talked about Poland and other places. But can you maybe kind of slightly deeper dive into what actually is going on in Eastern Europe? And is that one of the key reasons why the guide is so low for 2026? What is your expectation for Eastern Europe for this year? Are you seeing kind of delisting? Is it just big share losses? What's happening in Eastern Europe?

And then the second one is strategic. I think on the wires, Vincent, you say that M&A is a top priority. I think the quote is we're looking at every skin care opportunity that comes to market. Just a bit surprised on that comment, given you're in the middle of a big repositioning of NIVEA, you've got soft skin care market to deal with. Is this the right time to be looking at deals, where you've got so much going on, on the base business and also when perhaps some of the results from Coppertone and Chantecaille haven't been the best. Just interested in the timing of that comment and what's behind it?

Thank you so much. On your first question, yes, we had a difficult year in the Eastern Europe, and it used to be a growth driver for the Consumer division. First, the big thing is that the market went down from something that used to be 15% growth to flat 2%, 3%, which was, in fact, the results also of some consumer -- lack of consumer confidence. And the fact also that over the years, we all have now to increase prices due to increase of cost of goods.

So there was clearly an issue of consumer confidence. We had also a specific issue in the fact that we're over-indexed in personal care in these markets. We are pretty small in skin care. We are more in personal care. And in deodorants, we were hit by a lack of new products, but also a lack of investment.

And there is also a dynamic which is very interesting. There is a strong development of local brands. Korean brands, for example, which is obviously a challenge for us. So we have to come back with new products, new initiatives. We had also some difficult discussion with some retailers indeed. The good news is that we are back to very good discussions with retailers, and we have some good plans in place. We have also a lot of new launches, and I mentioned this affordable face care. This is one of the regions where we'll be clearly investing in affordable face care.

And last but not least, we believe also that some of the activities we are putting in place, for example, influencers, will help us also regaining market share again, Korean brands. So it's not yet the light at the end of the tunnel, but we feel more positive about Eastern Europe than we were in 2025.

On your second question, yes, we are looking at every acquisition. We are obviously looking at businesses that we could improve. This is why we will clearly not buy companies in places where we have no muscles, no know-how. We have to look at that. We have, as you know, a pretty small portfolio. We have also learned. We -- I think the M&A muscle has developed over time. We did a much better job with that Chantecaille than we did with Coppertone. Chantecaille is one of the big hopes of 2026. We fixed the basics. We have also a new team in place. So I believe we have a kind of knowledge or learning curve that is making us more able to integrate and to make good businesses.

So when they will come, we look at them, we might make an offer. We might not make an offer because every time we look at really at the price, but we need to be clearly looking at opportunities because today, we have a portfolio which is much too small.

And the next question is from Joffrey Bellicha Meller of Bank of America.

The first question is on the Chinese growth component in the fourth quarter. I was just wondering if you could explain a little bit more of the contribution from Thiamidol in the country and whether you had seen any cannibalization effects from your cross-border e-commerce sales previously. More importantly, I guess on China, thinking about 2026, you obviously have an easy base or an easy comp due to the rebalancing act you've performed last year. But I really wanted to understand whether you saw any legs to the growth that you saw in 4Q? And maybe I'll leave it at that on the Chinese piece.

The second element that I wanted to ask, maybe this is more for Astrid, but with this affordable face care line that you want to launch, what will be the impact on mix for the gross margin in 2026? And also in the press release, in that regard, you mentioned that the NIVEA rebalancing was going to last into 2027 as well. So is there any way of guiding us or helping us understand where we could land in terms of margins on EBIT for 2027?

Thank you, Joffrey. On China, I must say that we feel pretty positive. If you look at the different brands of the portfolio. I will start with La Prairie. La Prairie, we grew double digits, not only on e-commerce, but also on brick-and-mortar. We are gaining market share. So we are pretty positive about the development of China.

And I think some of the new products we are launching in the coming months will make our business on La Prairie business even better. We have also the launch of Chantecaille, which started at the end of the year, which is pretty promising. It's more e-commerce than brick-and-mortar, but this is clearly an opportunity for us. And then there is a Thiamidol effect that we took us 12 years to get the registration of Thiamidol. We started to launch Thiamidol and Eucerin, and we are extremely, extremely happy with the results.

Immediately, the serum, the anti-pigment serum became the #1 anti-pigment serum online in the market. And we are even the #2 anti-pigment brand online. So clearly, outstanding results on Eucerin. We are coming also with new products, the beauty of the Thiamidol story is that it comes with a lot of new SKUs. So I clearly believe that on Eucerin, we have found our way and China will become one of the top countries in the next future.

On NIVEA, we started late. We started only at the end of the year in November, December. The figures are good. But I want to be not overpromising. We have still some work to do. As you remember, we are transforming a cheap offline personal care brand into premium online face care brand. It has obviously -- it is a stretch. We have some good launches. We have some good activities. But overall, I think we'll have a good quarter 1, and we'll have a good year on all the brands of Beiersdorf in China.

And then your question on the affordable face care and the impact on mix as well as your question on EBIT. So look, the affordable face care line still tends to be accretive to our overall margin, especially also because the A&P spend behind it is not quite as strong as in our premium range, so it's still accretive.

Additionally, we continue to believe that we will grow our Derma business quite strongly, which will have a positive impact on our margin and our mix. Of course, there is then the investment behind other lines such deo and body, which will partly offset that. We're looking to still have a slightly positive or a balanced impact on margin and on the mix. So let's see.

In terms of 2027 EBIT, what we are saying for the midterm is that we look to continue to drive profitable growth. We are not at this time committing to a specific EBIT increase.

The next question is from Jeremy Fialko of HSBC.

Look, when we take the '26 guidance in aggregate, it obviously implies a worse performance for Consumer relative to 2026. So perhaps you could kind of give us a little bit more color from a sort of a brand standpoint, what you're expecting over the year? For example, do you think that NIVEA can grow in the year? Or is the repositioning and the work you need to do going to mean that it will be negative?

And then I guess maybe the second question is if we can just go a little bit deeper down into some of the drivers of the growth that you'd expect to see from NIVEA? And what I'd be interested to hear your comments on the things such as the drag you're likely to see on Personal Care, and whether there's going to be any sort of negative pricing effect on NIVEA, if there are certain things that you need to reposition or whether you think that the brand volumes actually can be positive? So those are my 2 questions.

Thank you so much, Jerry. On the guidance, we clearly have built the guidance on what we know and not what we hope. So when I look at what we know, we know that the skin care market has slowed down, used to be 7% last year. It's today more into the 1%, even negative in emerging market in volume.

So that's something we have to take into account, which is particularly important when you deal with NIVEA. It is also confirmed by the performance of some competitors. You saw the #1 skin care company delivering close to 0% growth. So we know it's a difficult moment for skin care. That we know.

The second thing we know, which is obvious, we know that Derma will continue to overperform. We are extremely optimistic with Derma. We have some big launches, and we mentioned and we'll talk about that later at the launch of Activia. We have also some big things coming at the end of the year. So more to come, but Derma is more than ever the growth engine that we know. We know also that I mentioned that, the effect of Sunrise and also the U.S. retail department store environment is causing us a big decrease in Q1. So obviously, we'll have to make it up in the next 9 months, which means that the performance of La Prairie won't be in line with the good performance we see in the sellout.

And last but not least, something we don't know yet. We don't know yet when the recalibration of NIVEA will show its effect. We are happy to see that the January market share is positive. That's something we didn't experience since a long time. So that's a first very, very good sign. We know also that the new products are coming in the second semester that we are also having this activation of local franchises in the second quarter. So we will -- clearly, we are aiming at having a positive NIVEA in 2026. But clearly, the market dynamics will pay a role. The appeal of our new products and new advertising campaign will have a role, and this is something we'll monitor. And of course, we'll update you every quarter.

On the second element, NIVEA Personal Care, it's a complicated environment because we have clearly a good proposal in Europe, and this is why we were happy to see some market share gain in Europe with the launch of Derma Control. So we are even in a pretty good position and #1 in many countries.

It's a bit more difficult in emerging markets. We have clearly some markets which are collapsing, was the case of Brazil. We know also that we have to improve the value of our deliveries in the sense that we cannot increase prices, but we have to increase profitability in order to invest. So there is some value management to engage in. So we are working on that. We have not yet -- we have not yet found the perfect recipe for emerging markets, but this is clearly a priority.

And also here, what is interesting, we have big, big local franchises in Latin America, in Thailand. So we will also leverage those franchises, which have a pretty strong appeal locally, and that will complement the global launches like Derma Control and the relaunch of Black & White. So we don't need to decrease prices. You have to remember that NIVEA is cheap. It's between EUR 2 and EUR 10. Only 2 products are more expensive. This is LUMINOUS serum and this is Epicelline. So we have a good price, but clearly, we have to find the good activities in the country to regain momentum.

So the next one is David Hayes of Jefferies.

So a couple for me. Just following up on the sort of volume mix pricing dynamics. Can you give us a sense of what the contributions will be across those 3 elements in that sort of flattish guide for 2026 in Consumer? And I may have missed it, but can you give us that for retrospectively 2025?

And then secondly, on the margin reconciliation. Is there kind of an accelerated cost save intention program within the margin guidance? I'm just trying to reconcile the moving parts again, given marketing spend seems to be at least equal, you've got this FX headwind dynamic. I'm just trying to understand what the offsets are to that, that the margin would still be relatively flat.

And maybe on the FX, 50 basis point headwind last year. Is it possible given where we are today on rates, et cetera, to give a sense of the quantum of the FX headwind in 2026 as it stands?

I think Astrid will take both questions.

In terms of this year's growth, 2026, we do see primarily volume growth from what we are expecting at the moment, much, much less pricing growth, as we've already seen. Again, from a mix perspective, we do see a balance where we continue to drive certain parts of our business, particularly Derma, but also face care and so on, that should be accretive to our margins.

And then we will see, obviously, and hopefully acceleration of our deo business, which will be partly offsetting, but hopefully really contributing to that volume growth. In terms of, I'll call it, cost discipline, I think we have worked the last years and plan to continue to do that, to really ensure that in the end, when we're thinking about our overheads, we invest in the strategic areas of our business, but then look to continue to keep all other costs really under control and even reduce.

You would have seen that we've made some progress there. And yes, FX headwinds has obviously been quite significant in the last year. We have had some help, obviously, from what we've hedged into the new year. That's a bit less, unfortunately, of an impact.

We do see that negative on our results. Let's see where it ends up being. It's really very uncertain right now to really give you a precise number. We will monitor that and make sure that obviously, we find ways to offset the impact there.

The next one is Guillaume Delmas of UBS.

Two questions for me, please. One on NIVEA and one on La Prairie. On NIVEA first and the innovation program for 2026. I think at the same time last year, you were showing us that 47% of the brand would be launched or relaunched in 2025. So wondering how does 2026 compare to that 47% level of 2025? Should we expect a similar magnitude or even a further step up?

And still on the innovation topics for NIVEA, I mean you announced this morning, you're launching -- you will be launching accessible face care propositions. At the same time, you've also introduced very premium products such as Epicelline. So how do you ensure that you do not overstretch too much the NIVEA brand? And then my second question on La Prairie. I mean, brand had an encouraging end to '25. But yet, if I look at the annual turnover of La Prairie, it's now nearly 30% smaller than what it was in 2022. So you indicated the Q1 softness, but where does the brand go from here? I mean do you think it needs some adjustments to its strategy? Or you're confident that it will be back to positive growth territory in 2026? And that you can go back to the 2022 sales level in not-too-distant future?

Thank you, Guillaume, for your question. On your first question, you're right, we had planned to do, 40% of our portfolio is supposed to be relaunched, was relaunched in 2025. It is true also that most of the relaunches were based on some sustainability changes. So it was not really visible in some cases by consumers.

So we will -- and we have also made some changes that was what required a lot of investment and did not really deliver additional sellout. So 2026 will be a bit wiser in terms of relaunches. We have some launches and they will be hitting the shelf in Q2 and Q3 mostly.

And in terms of relaunches, will come really when we come with a true added value. For example, we are relaunching Black & White deo with a bit formula. We're also launching our sun care line. So clearly, choosing the areas where R&D can provide a visible benefit to consumers, and we'll do that in the, as I said, mostly from April.

On the -- your question on accessible face care and premium face care is absolutely right. But I would say there are 3 cases. And there are the cases where we can do both. I think Europe is obvious. We have a brand, which is so large and so wide that it is not a problem, and you just have to visit a store to have LUMINOUS and Epicelline around EUR 20 and have an accessible Q10 at EUR 10 and Essential at EUR 2. So we have to find a way to support both. Most of them -- some of them are media-driven, other are more promotional-driven, some of them are influencer-driven. So we'll be able to do that.

In emerging markets, it's a bit different. There are countries, for example, I was mentioning Brazil, where we are not launching Epicelline because we believe that the consumer price of Epicelline is too high, then here in Brazil, the focus will be clearly facial will come with new innovation in the second semester and also a big launch in 2027.

So facial will be the absolute priority for the skin care business, the face care business of Brazil. And other emerging market where we will privilege on the contrary, the premium face care offer, but using some specific elements. For example, you might have seen the pictures. We are launching LUMINOUS in Thailand, in a sachet. So we have the most premium of NIVEA, this is Thiamidol, but we use also the right way to each consumer and to be sure that consumers are purchasing the LUMINOUS in their stores.

On your question about La Prairie, you're absolutely right in your statement. I think the new strategy that we are putting in place is starting to pay off. And again, if I eliminate this one-off effect of our Q1, it's about coming with a more affordable proposal. And when I talk affordable, this is obviously something which is more around EUR 300.

We tried that already with some smaller sizes of existing franchises and Skin Caviar, for example. We are coming soon with a new franchise, which will be priced between EUR 150 and EUR 300, which will allow us to convince to recruit younger consumers, which obviously could be a bit reluctant, putting EUR 1,000 in a cream of La Prairie.

The second element where we are clearly accelerating e-commerce. We are already pretty good in China. I was mentioning the successive double-digit growth that we have since 5 years in e-commerce, Tmall, JD, and TikTok, but we are also becoming much more ambitious in the rest of the world. We are launching next month, for example, La Prairie on Amazon in the U.S. That's something which is a premier, and we are working with Amazon to be sure that the equity of the brand will be respected.

We have other plans also like that, which we lose to be more accessible, especially in the world where you see clearly that department stores are losing ground and the e-commerce is taking over. So the strategy is starting to work. Again, China is a good example. Much more to do. So hopefully, again, after this hiccup of the Q1, we should see some good things happening on La Prairie.

The next one is Olivier Nicolai of Goldman Sachs.

First question is on Germany specifically. One of your competitors launched a Mixa brand. Do you see any impact for core NIVEA there? And how you're planning to protect your market share?

Yes, Mixa is a brand which has been launched in Europe and starting in Germany. So obviously, aiming at taking over market share from NIVEA. This is a partly strong in body and not present in other categories.

I mean, they are part of the competition, the way CeraVe was a competitor also in the past. We have a good formula. We have also good activities. If you were in Germany, Olivier, you will see today this week, a big campaign on the NIVEA cream Vegan. We're adding a new SKU to NIVEA cream, the historical iconic NIVEA cream also to gain some shelf and to gain also new users, and it's working very well. So we'll treat Mixa as a normal competitors and forcing us to be even better on body and on NIVEA cream, but so far, so good. We are growing on body.

And the next one is Karel Zoete of Kepler Cheuvreux.

Question with regards to the margin. You look back to the last 5 years, and we see good progress from both top line and bottom line. But if we go back to 10 years, you had a business with a 15% operating margin in Consumer.

Today, you're almost 50% larger on the top line. So I was just wondering why is there not more operational leverage in your business given the scale you've added during that period of time? And good gross margins. So that's the first question. And the second question is really quite straightforward, given where FX sits today, your expectations on EBIT, would you expect EPS growth in 2026?

Astrid?

Yes. So look, in terms of our progress, we have showed even some in our presentation this time around. We have made really nice progress in the last few years. In terms of your answer where we are versus the time when it was similar or even higher. During the time, the margin was primarily achieved through really cutting advertising spending to drive profitability, while a lot of investments in the business, e-commerce, digital and so on were not made. We have since, as you know, back at a few years back, really kind of done a margin reset to really invest in those businesses.

But then with the investments in those businesses drive the right kind of growth that will allow us to hopefully scale much, much faster in the future. And we've made that progress. As you see, we have really caught up on e-commerce.

We're doing very well there. We're really digital in terms of our advertising. We're trying to be where the market is and really compete there. We've significantly invested in our innovation in our white spaces. So we're really putting the money to good use to then drive longer-term growth. Yes, this last year has been a bit of a hiccup, also driven by the markets, but we do think for the future, we have that opportunity with these investments to continue to drive profitable growth.

And then in terms of your question, look, we are at this moment, given also the uncertainty giving this guidance of slightly below prior year in terms of EBIT. We will stay with that right now to allow us that flexibility but hope throughout the year, we can provide more color on that figure.

And then the next one is Fon Udomsilpa from RBC.

Two from me, please, on market share and pricing. So first one, you already provide a lot of color around market share performance by region, but could you also comment on the performance for the whole Consumer business through 2025 following the launches in Q4, how has that trend compared to the beginning of the year?

Any number you could give would be helpful. And another one on NIVEA pricing, sorry. So in preparation for the strategy to broaden price range for the portfolio, could you help us think where do you see the current price positioning of NIVEA? Any part of the portfolio you think maybe the brand is not as price competitive yet or any part of the portfolio that you see higher competition?

On the market share, overall, we gained market share in a very strong way in Derma. In Derma, we are overperforming the market by a factor of 3. So gaining market share in absolutely every country, on absolutely every category. It's not only the case of anti-pigment. It's also the case of anti-age. We became, for example, #1 anti-age brand emerging market, and we were already #1 in anti-pigment. So clearly, sun care gaining market share every year in every country. So clearly, Derma, we are really in this dynamic since 5 years, and we believe that it will continue.

On NIVEA, we are not gaining market share, and this is why I was happy to mention that January '26 is positive after a number of months without positive gain. We're not really losing market share against the big guys. We are losing market share against local brands and indie brands, so which is forcing us to react, hence, the localization in some real, hence the use of influencers.

But overall, this is one of the priority. I clearly would like NIVEA to regain market share and to be back into this positive dynamics. On La Prairie, different profiles. Overall, we are gaining slightly market share. But clearly, where we overperform in China. China, we are gaining packet share in brick-and-mortar and e-commerce. In the U.S., we are getting better and better quarter after quarter.

So in the last quarter, we were at parity with the market, knowing that the U.S. is a bit specific. We are only sold in the department store, and we are also a bit victims of the disaffection of department stores. So overall, okay, and some good also news in some European countries. And last but not least, Health Care, we are gaining market share every year since 9 years, overperforming the market. This is an extremely strong brand, also very profitable.

So very happy to see that. So in total, as I said, we are a business -- skin care business, which grew 3.7%. The skin care market grew 1.5%, 2%. So we gained market share in 2025 as a company in skin care.

On your second question, I think, as I mentioned, the price positioning of NIVEA, we are an 85% of the range is between EUR 2 and EUR 10. So we don't have an issue of price. We did have some issue of pricing with our LUMINOUS range in emerging markets. This is why we decided to change the packaging of LUMINOUS in order to be able to price down LUMINOUS but still being profitable. That's the change we have done. So we don't have the same packaging LUMINOUS versus Europe versus emerging market. We have also reworked to know the formula to be sure we would be affordable in India.

If you remember, I presented the case, and we moved from dispenser to a tube in order to have the same gross margin, but to have a product which is acceptable. And we just did the same with the sachet in Thailand, also to have the right offer while not deteriorating the gross margin. So we are no -- we don't want to decrease prices. We are coming with a moderate price increase and even no price increase in some cases. But clearly, we believe today that we have the right setup for our brands, and this is how we believe we're going to be able to regain momentum.

So we'll have 2 more. We'll start with Bernadette Hogg of Reuters, and we'll have Mikheil afterwards. So Bernadette, please go ahead.

So my first question was, are you thinking of joining some of your peers and asking for paid U.S. tariffs back now that the Supreme Court has judged them to be illegal. And at the 9 months results, you mentioned the skinimalism trend. Is that something you see continuing through 2026? And how do you think about positioning yourselves within trends like that?

We didn't get the second question.

What sort of trends are you speaking about?

Skinimalism. You talked about that 9 month...

Absolutely. Skinimalism. On the first question, no, we are not planning to be part of the company suing the U.S. government simply because we are not really hit by the tariffs. As you might remember, we have -- 90% of our products are either products produced in Mexico where we have the U.S. MCA agreement.

So we are not -- there's no additional tax and the rest is produced in the U.S. So the part which is produced in Europe is a very small part of the Eucerin range. So we are not planning to be part of this movement. On the second element, yes, absolutely. The skinimalism is something which is very important. We see that in all categories. We see that in derma, we see that in luxury, we see that in the -- on mass market.

It's about having the right ingredients, it's having the right offer. So we are -- one of the things also we are recalibrating, We used to be very obsessed by our own ingredients and Thiamidol, Epicelline. We are coming also with other ingredients, which are well-known, could be vitamin C, could be niacinamide in order to be sure that we are able to offer in one product, an even better, an even stronger performance by mixing ingredients.

We are also working on some specific products, which are combining the skin effect of, for example, moisturizer and a cream. So all of that is underway. And we believe also that our brands are pretty well positioned. If you look at Eucerin, this is a problem solution brand. So exactly spot on with the trend. And if you look at NIVEA, we are used also to convince women which are using a small routine, for example, Germany, but also a very large routine, like in China, Korea or Japan. So we are equipped for that, and we leverage this trend.

Next one is Mikheil Omanadze of BNP Paribas.

I have one, please. Based on what you hear in the market, what actions are your major competitors taking to remedy this skin and personal care slowdown? And are any of your large retailer partners pushing for price reductions, which may suggest maybe more material pricing pressure in mass skin and personal care that is factored into your full year guidance?

Great question. The slowdown we -- it happened already. I was looking at the history, in 2013, skin care market minus 2%, 14% plus 2%, 15% plus 14%. If you look again 2018, plus 3% the year after, plus 9%. So it's something it's cycle. At the end of the day, the skin care market remains the most strategic market.

The way our traditional competitors are acting is coming with new innovations. We were lucky to be really the one bringing all the top innovation in skin care. As I said in my introduction, a lot of people are talking longevity. We have launched Epicelline already 1 year ago.

So this is the way you drive market up. We are in a business, which is offer driven, and which is not really demand-driven. So if we come with a nice proposal, if we come with a new formula, this is a way we attract new consumers. We convince them to buy our products.

Are other players doing another game? Yes, of course, if you look at the local brands, if you look at the indie brands, it's about cheaper prices. It's about very well-known ingredients. It's about influencers only. And the good news in a way that it goes up and down. And at the end, the big brands are back, and this is where the consumers come back when they want to have a safe formula when they want to have a safe ingredients.

And this is also why we feel that the market dynamics will come back. I mean one good example I could mention, if you look at Derma, we are delivering a double-digit growth every year since 5 years, despite the fact that the market went down to low single-digit growth in 2025.

The market is what you bring to the market, and we are pretty well equipped in skin care with the Beiersdorf R&D muscle.

Sorry, on pricing potential?

No. Pricing honestly, when you look at competition, we don't see any actions, which I think will damage the market. We are doing promotion in mass market. That's true for everybody. No big issue on this front.

Thank you. That was our last question. This concludes our full year results conference. Beiersdorf's next Investor release event will be the release of our first quarter results on April 21, 2026. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf and look forward to seeing you here again in April. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q3 Results 2025 Conference Call of Beiersdorf AG. I'm Moritz, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christopher Sheldon, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter conference call. I'm here with our CEO, Vincent Warnery; and our CFO, Astrid Hermann. As always, we will start with the presentation of our sales performance of the quarter and the first 9 months of the year, followed by a Q&A session.

And with that, I'd like to hand over to Vincent.

Thank you, Christopher, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call. Astrid and I will provide an overview of our sales performance and key developments of the third quarter and the first 9 months of the year.

The third quarter continued to be impacted by a very challenging market environment. Despite the headwinds, Beiersdorf was able to improve its performance versus the prior quarter. Our Derma business continues to outperform, delivering outstanding double-digit growth and winning market shares across regions. In September, we kicked off 2 major NIVEA launches. In our face care franchise, we roll out our breakthrough ingredient Epicelline. In our deodorant range, we launched the new Derma control line. While the initial impact on Q3 was limited due to timing, these launches are a key building block for our performance in Q4.

We've also initiated a strategic rebalancing of the NIVEA core portfolio by broadening our efforts beyond face care to other skin care categories and reinforcing high potential categories like deodorants. And finally, in a continued challenging market, La Prairie returned to growth in Q3, supported by improved momentum in China.

Let's take a closer look at how these developments are shaping our recent performance. The third quarter showed signs of gradual improvement, while we continue to see volatility across key markets. NIVEA continues to face pressure from an even weaker mass market environment especially in emerging markets, resulting in an organic sales decline of 0.4%. The major launches initiated in September only had a limited impact on Q3. Excluding the strategic repositioning in China, which is now completed, NIVEA's organic sales growth would have been positive.

Our Derma business, with Eucerin and Aquaphor, once again delivered strong double-digit growth of 12.4%, reaffirming its role as a key growth driver in our portfolio. Our Health Care business, which includes the Hansaplast and Elastoplast brands outstanding growth of 9.8%, still supported by the successful rollout of our Second Skin plaster innovation. And despite ongoing market volatility, La Prairie continued its sequential quarterly improvement as planned, turning to positive organic sales growth of plus 1.6% in Q3. Overall, our Consumer Business recorded organic sales growth of 2.1% in the third quarter.

Let me point out that our skin care organic sales growth increased to 4% in Q3 compared to 2.6% in the first half of the year. Beiersdorf's performance in the third quarter was flat, in line with our expectations and impacted by the difficult environment in the automotive industry. The Electronics segment, on the other hand, delivered a positive contribution, driven by a strong performance in Asia. Overall, this results in group organic sales growth of 1.7% in Q3.

Looking at our Derma business in more detail. Once again, we delivered double-digit growth of 12.4% in the third quarter, a fantastic results on top of the tough 2024 comparison base when we first launched Epicelline. This underlines the strength of our innovation pipeline and our ability to identify and capture white space opportunities. It proves that we can deliver outstanding results and outperform competition even in markets that have slowed down substantially compared to previous years. Innovation remains the cornerstone of our success. This applies both to breakthrough ingredients and to the regular relaunches across our portfolio.

Epicelline launched just a year ago, continues its successful rollout and remains a key growth driver in our Derma portfolio. And Thiamidol, which has been on the market for 7 years, continues to grow double digits. At Europe's leading dermatology congress EADV, Thiamidol was recognized as the only Derma-cosmetic active ingredient delivering effective treatment of hyperpigmentation at the root cause. This was endorsed by a newly established global consensus for the treatment of hyperpigmentation, a powerful validation of our science-led approach. But innovation doesn't stop with our hero ingredients. We continue to invest in regular relaunches across our portfolio.

With our new Eucerin DERMOPURE Clinical range, for example, we are not simply introducing a new product line. We are delivering science-based solutions for acne, a skin concern that affects up to 85% of people globally. Acne is a leading reason for dermatological consultation and one of the fastest-growing categories in skin care.

Our Derma business is not only performing across categories, it's also delivering across regions. In North America, our largest market for Derma, we achieved outstanding growth of plus 56% in the Eucerin Face category despite the slow overall market. The launch of the Eucerin Radiant Tone range with Thiamidol earlier this year, is showing excellent traction. In Europe, we are excited to report double-digit growth of plus 10%. This was fueled by the continued success of Epicelline, which is reinforcing our innovation leadership in the region.

Looking at Northeast Asia, the entry of Eucerin into the domestic market in China has exceeded expectations with exceptional organic sales growth of plus 86% in the third quarter. Following the official approval of our patented ingredient Thiamidol last year, we are already seeing early success in the market. The Eucerin Thiamidol serum has already achieved a double-digit market share making it the #1 derma anti-pigment serum in China. And last but not least, we'll be launching Eucerin Japan, another white space next month.

With NIVEA, we successfully started the launch of our breakthrough ingredient Epicelline in September. Building on the strong results achieved with Eucerin, we are now scaling this innovation into the mass market. This is the biggest NIVEA launch of all times. While the impact on our Q3 figures were still limited due to timing of the launch, the first week has already performed above our expectations. We are seeing strong early traction, including #1 category positions across key European markets. In France, for example, the NIVEA Epigenetics Serum reached the #1 position in hygiene and beauty products.

And in Germany and Austria, we secured the #1 face care position at dm, the region's largest drugstore retailer. The initial strong launch performance is also visible in our September net sales figures for NIVEA with organic sales growth of plus 7.8%. A key driver of this momentum alongside the very recent NIVEA Epicelline launch, has been our NIVEA Derma Control Deodorant range. This is where our skin care expertise meets the high performance of personal care, the skinification of deodorants.

While our recent launches are encouraging, we acknowledge that NIVEA's overall performance has fallen short of our initial expectations this year, particularly in the second quarter. So let me remind you of the journey we are on. Four years ago, we put a strategic focus on skin care, our core strength. We are committed to innovation, expanding into white spaces guided by our belief that beauty is global and offer-driven. This strategy has delivered outstanding results since 2022, 2023 and 2024, NIVEA achieved exceptional growth in some cases even double digit. That success gives us confidence in the path that we have chosen.

Now to ensure that NIVEA continues on the strong growth trajectory we are making targeted adjustments with a proactive rebalancing of our portfolio. What does it mean? We are broadening our focus within skin care. While face care remains a key category, we are balancing our R&D and marketing investments across other skin care segments.

We're also reinforcing deodorants as a strategic growth pillar, a category where NIVEA has a strong right to win through innovation. NIVEA is a value for money brand and stands for affordable prices, and that remains unchanged. While we see customers' willingness to pay for breakthrough innovations like Thiamidol and Epicelline, most of our portfolio continues to be priced at accessible price ranges. We know there is work ahead, but we also know that we are capable of, and we are taking action to bring NIVEA back to stronger growth and continue building on its legacy as 1 of the world's most trusted skin care brand.

And let's not forget, as we have always said, even a brand has established as NIVEA still offers significant white space opportunities. A great example is India, where we launched NIVEA Face earlier this year and are continuing our double-digit trajectory. We are equally excited about the potential of NIVEA Thiamidol in China, where we are just beginning to build momentum. This leads me to our NIVEA repositioning efforts in China, which were completed at the end of Q3. Performance has stabilized, and NIVEA in China is already back to growth in October setting the stage for acceleration in the remaining fourth quarter.

Our strategy in China is clear. We aim to win through innovation in skin care. With Thiamidol as our hero ingredient, we are confident that it provides a distinct competitive edge in this highly dynamic market. China remains a key opportunity for us in the mid- to long term. It's a demanding environment, but with the right portfolio and continued innovation, we are convinced that NIVEA is well positioned to compete even against strong local brands.

Coming to La Prairie, which is back to growth. While the market environment remains volatile, La Prairie delivered a solid Q3 performance with growth of plus 1.6%. This was driven in part by continued momentum in China, which achieved growth of 3% and an outstanding double-digit sellout. I'm also pleased to announce a major milestone in our global expansion strategy. After successfully establishing NIVEA Face and Eucerin in India, we've now expanded our premium portfolio with the launch of La Prairie, exclusively on Nykaa. This marks our entry into 1 of the world's most dynamic and fast-growing beauty markets, an important step in strengthening our global footprint.

Before I hand over to Astrid, let me turn to our e-commerce performance. E-commerce continues to be a key growth driver for Beiersdorf. In the first 9 months, we achieved organic sales growth of 16.6% with Q3 accelerating to 19.2%. We are gaining market share everywhere, with particularly strong momentum in emerging markets in Europe. Our Luxury e-commerce business continues to grow, fueled by targeting online activations, while our Derma portfolio shows global trends delivering double-digit growth across all regions.

Astrid will now take us through the tesa results and our financial performance in more detail.

Thank you, Vincent. Now let us review tesa's business performance for the first 9 months of 2025. Despite ongoing market challenges, tesa delivered 2.0% organic sales growth year-to-date, rising uncertainty and the potential impact of U.S. tariffs continue to affect demand, particularly in Europe and North America, while Asia continues to be a strong growth contributor. Our Electronics business was a key growth driver, supported by strong demand for major customers, particularly in Asia. The automotive segment continues to navigate a complex and volatile market environment. Despite the challenges, the segment showed resilience and delivered growth in some regions, particularly in Asia Pacific, where we are winning new customer projects.

tesa's consumer segment remains under pressure, especially in Europe, Nevertheless, it achieved growth over the first 9 months, supported by a solid performance in the third quarter. Finally, I'd like to highlight a leadership change Dr. Kourosh Bahrami, has succeeded Dr. Norman Goldberg as CEO of tesa, with over 30 years of international leadership in the adhesive industry, Dr. Bahrami brings strong leadership and a clear commitment to drive customer value and sustainable growth. We thank Dr. Goldberg for his transformative leadership and look forward to continuing tesa's successful course under Dr. Bahrami's direction.

Now let's continue with our 9-month sales performance in more detail. In the first 9 months of 2025 Beiersdorf Consumer division grew by 2.0% organically. Due to unfavorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales declined slightly to EUR 6.25 billion. The tesa division reported solid organic growth of 2.0% for the same period. In nominal terms, net sales remained flat at EUR 1.29 billion. Overall, the group generated EUR 7.5 billion net sales in the first 9 months of 2025, translating into 2.0% organic sales growth.

Now let's take a closer look at the performance of our brands within the Consumer Business segment. Vincent has already provided an overview of the third quarter sales results. So I will focus on a summary of our brand's performance in the first 9 months of this year. In a persistently challenging market environment, NIVEA delivered modest growth of 0.6% in the first 9 months. Our performance was further impacted by higher competition from local brands and the strategic repositioning in China, which we successfully completed at the end of Q3.

In addition, our innovation pipeline was weighted towards the second half of the year, especially Q4. Key launches, including Epicelline and Deo Derma Control, were launched in September and only had a minor effect on Q3. They are expected to be a strong pillar of our growth in Q4. Derma sustained its strong momentum with an outstanding performance over the first 9 months, achieving 12.3% sales growth, clearly outperforming the market and our peers. Eucerin Face delivered exceptional results driven by the successful rollout of Epicelline and the launch of Thiamidol in the U.S.

Growth was further supported by the remarkable success in Latin America, particularly in Brazil and Mexico, as well as the successful launch of Eucerin in domestic China and India. Building on the strong momentum from the first half of the year, Health Care continued to reinforce its market position in Q3, delivering a remarkable 8.8% sales growth for the first 9 months. Australia and Indonesia delivered double-digit growth, both in Q3 and across the 9-months period, while Germany also accelerated to double-digit growth in Q3.

For La Prairie, we have seen a gradual improvement quarter-by-quarter, resulting in a return to growth in the third quarter. This recovery was supported by an improving performance in China, particularly a strong e-commerce business during Q2 and Q3.

Let's take a closer look at the organic sales growth of our Consumer Business in the first 9 months across regions. In Europe, we grew by 1.2% with Western Europe growing 1.7% and Eastern Europe slightly declining with 0.7%. Western Europe was negatively impacted by the global luxury travel retail business, particularly during the beginning of the year. Eastern Europe faced pressure from a broader market slowdown and retailer conflicts, particularly in the first half.

The Americas region concluded the first 9 months with a robust growth of 2.2%. North America showed a mixed performance with excellent results in Derma, driven by the Thiamidol launch in the U.S. while facing some headwinds in the mass business and with Coppertone in the tough sun care market. Latin America grew by 2.0%, also reflecting a mixed performance. Eucerin delivered strong double-digit growth with outstanding results in key markets such as Mexico and Brazil while our NIVEA business was impacted by general market slowdown, particularly in the deo category and by increased competition from local brands.

The Africa, Asia, Australia region delivered solid sales growth of 2.9% despite a negative impact from the ongoing NIVEA portfolio cleanup in China, which was successfully concluded by the end of Q3 as planned. Strong growth was recorded in markets such as India and Japan.

With that, I would like to hand over to Vincent, who will provide the outlook for the rest of the year.

Thank you, Astrid. Let us conclude with our guidance for the rest of the year 2025. The Consumer Business delivered plus 2% organic sales growth over the first 9 months with an improvement visible in Q3. At the same time, we saw a further deterioration of the market in the third quarter, especially in emerging markets, which is affecting the core of our mass market business. As a result, we are adjusting our full year guidance to around 2.5% organic sales growth for consumer.

Our expected growth for the fourth quarter is based on the following pillars. NIVEA is entering the final quarter with a strong innovation pipeline. We recently launched Epicelline, our breakthrough innovation in skin care along with our new derma control deodorant. These launches are still in the early stage and are expected to gain traction and visibility throughout the fourth quarter. Early indicators and the September performance are positive as highlighted in our presentation.

The remainder of the year will be driven by the performance of these launches as well as the strengthening of Nivea core business to support both we have implemented targeted rebalancing measures to reinforce our core categories, while at the same time, supporting the successful rollout of our innovations. In China, the strategic repositioning of Nivea, which had a negative effect on our performance during the first 9 months has now been completed and will no longer weigh on our results going forward.

Our luxury business with La Prairie is beginning to show encouraging signs of improvement, the return to growth in the third quarter. Finally, our Derma segment continues to perform strongly. We expect double-digit growth over the full year while Q4 is expected to remain below the 9 months performance due to an exceptionally strong fourth quarter in 2024 when Epicelline was rolled out initially. We still confirm our EBIT margin guidance with an improvement of 20 basis points, excluding special factor in the Consumer segment for the full year.

In the tesa Business Segment, we confirm our guidance of 1% to 3% organic sales net growth and an EBIT margin, excluding special factors, at around 16%. At group level, we expect organic sales growth of around 2.5% with the EBIT margin, excluding special factors, slightly above last year's level. We continue to be committed to outperforming the market over mid-term, driven by innovation and strategic expansion into white spaces.

On profitability, as we have stated in the past, will not sacrifice long-term value creation potential over short-term margin optimization. Nevertheless, we remain committed to profitable growth with EBIT growing at least as fast as the top line. We'll provide further guidance for 2026 and beyond in our full year 2025 call.

Now over to you, Christopher for the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And we will start with Patrick Folan of Barclays this morning.

Just 2 questions for me. Maybe focusing on NIVEA first. You had a strong September performance. Was this mainly due to the Epicelline sell-in here and your Derma deo performance? Or was there a wider recovery in the core portfolio here? And my second question is that you talk about value for money for the NIVEA brand, are there any changes you are making to the current pricing strategy with NIVEA in any of your markets? And in terms of the Epicelline price point in Europe, are you still targeting a EUR 25 to EUR 30 pricing?

Patrick. On your first question, yes, absolutely, the success of the month of September is mostly due to the launch of Epicelline, NIVEA Epicelline and Derma Control, as the core business, the core market has been in line with Q2. Epicelline is really doing extremely well. I receive every day very good sell-out results. I mentioned, #1 hygiene and beauty product in France. I mentioned also Germany. I was looking also at Italy. This is already the #1 serum in Italy. This is the #1 serum in Netherlands. This is the #1 face care product in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Spain, in Portugal.

So clearly, it was already by far the best ever launched Epicelline, but we clearly sell out going in the right direction. Derma Control, we launched it a bit later. We are doing extremely well. I mean, Romania, we are back to the best ever market share in deo. We are regaining market share in deo in Germany. So I feel also very positive about that.

On your question about the value for money, I think you have to really to remember that there are only 2 expensive products in the range of NIVEA, which are the Epicelline and the Thiamidol launch. The rest of the product are priced between EUR 2 and EUR 4. So there is no issue of price positioning. This being said, we are currently launching Epicelline. And the way the business is managed, we have some promotions. So for example, if you go to the U.K. that [ Bucci ] is promoting the product at GBP 24, for example, versus a normal price at GBP 29. We have also some promotions.

So we will fine-tune the -- we'll see a little bit of the first months are working. And if we feel the need to go below EUR 29, could be EUR 28, EUR 27. We'll do it just to be sure that we have absolutely the right price elasticity. On Derma Control, we had EUR 2.80, so absolutely no issue. So the only open question and again, we'll have the market results soon is do we decrease the price of Epicelline by EUR 1 or EUR 2 in Europe, knowing that, as you might remember, in emerging markets, we are pricing Epicelline below. We are at EUR 22, having also a specific packaging, which allows to keep the same margin, but at a lower price.

Okay. Just to clarify one thing there. Just on pricing, so you feel comfortable with the price points you have in your current portfolio as we go into next year?

Absolutely. I mean the prices are between EUR 2 and EUR 4. What we are clearly trying to do is to reduce the price increase we do next year. You might remember that we were the only brand doing a price increase in 2025, which created some customer retaliations. We try to minimize that next year, focusing really on the products and the innovation where we are bringing a real added value to consumers.

The next question is from Celine Pannuti of JPMorgan.

My first question is on the market growth. Vincent, you said that the market has decelerated, especially in emerging markets, and you adjusted your guide for that. How do you feel the company can deliver as you look into 2026? So also given that you're talking about the rebalancing of investment for NIVEA, I wonder as well if you can provide on how you feel in terms of your new level of investment in the deodorant and personal care part and whether for 2026, we should expect that you have -- you need this extra investment and maybe a limited margin expansion? That's my first question. I'll give you the second one after.

On your first question, Celine, so what we clearly see, and I mentioned that in my speech that the market -- the skin care market is difficult. And we have -- if you look at the year-to-date figures, we are more -- we are around 0.5%, 1% growth on the market with, of course, different dynamics in mass market, we are around 5%. Derma, this is the news, we are more into the 3%, 4% and luxury is still at minus 5%. So this is a market which is not growing as much as expected. We are expecting a small recovery in the months to come.

We see, for example, that the derma market in the U.S. is doing better, and we are over performing this market. We see also luxury, I was mentioning China, but also saw some good figures in luxury going in the same direction. So overall, for the market growth this year between 1% and 2%, and we believe that we go slightly above next year. What we are -- what is making us optimistic in a way is that the worst market dynamics is the derma market. And this is a market which really used to be growing at double digit. And we are now into a market dynamics, which is around 3%, 4%. And this is a market where we are overperforming by a factor to between 2 and 3x the market because we are coming with innovation and because we are supporting those innovation.

And this is why when I look at the dynamics next year, on NIVEA. I feel a little bit better than I would say, in 2025 because we have the launches that we are doing right now, and I mentioned Epicelline and Derma Control, but we have also a launch plan, which is much more -- much better balanced next year with more launches in the first semester versus this year and something where we can really have a more balanced dynamics launches versus core.

And we are indeed, thanks also to the courageous decisions we have taken on prices, we are able to manage a pretty good gross margin, allowing us to invest -- to continue to invest on those launches. So we will rebalance a little bit the investment between the face care premium product, and we had to launch both Thiamidol and Epicelline in 2025. So rebalance this money into not only other skin care categories, also on more affordable face care proposal, for example, in emerging market, but also on the other end. So with the current P&L equation, we can increase the marketing spendings beyond NIVEA. And of course, on Derma, there is no question, we will continue to invest more.

All right. Just maybe to follow up on that, asking whether the 50 basis points plus margin expansion that's your midterm target, how you feel about it going into '26. So that's my follow-up. And then my second question, Astrid now. Can you provide a bit more details about Europe, which really came back to good growth at 3%. Was there a travel retail impact there? If you can tell us what quantify this? And how do you feel about the overall consumer and retail environment? Of course, you have the benefit of the sellout and sell-in of Epicelline. But overall, how you feel the European market is developing as we look into the quarters to come.

On your first question, so we will not give a guidance for 2026, and we'll give that in 2025, but we maintain the idea that we have to overperform the market and continue to grow profitably. So we'll come back to that in 3 months. On your question about Europe, yes, travel retail has an impact on the performance of Europe. This is a 40 basis point impact because we are overperforming this market with La Prairie, but this is a double-digit negative market. So this has an impact on Europe.

When you look at the question sell-in versus sell-out, the fact that we see some improvement in deo, for example, which was really the biggest market share loss in 2025 in Europe is making us more optimistic. Even if you look at Germany, which is by far our biggest deo market we have been gaining market share over the last 3 months in a row, which is a good news. We see also that the outstanding success of the sun season in Europe, we grew 12% in a market which was growing double digit, but this is really one of the best performance in Sun is also giving us some good momentum.

So deo, I would say we feel positive. Sun care is positive. The question is face care. As I said, the sellout results we are getting from specific retailers is promising. But you remember my story, sell-in is one thing, sell-out is another thing. Repurchase is absolutely essential, and this is what we'll be able to measure in the first quarter. So not to -- neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but some good signals that will -- should give us some better performance in Europe next year.

The next question is from Jeremy Fialko of HSBC.

So a couple of questions from me. First one, just to go into the Eastern Europe region that was kind of pretty negative within the period. So just what's going on there? And then the second question is just on kind of capital return. Now you've done the EUR 500 million share buyback for the last couple of years. Do you think -- what do you think the potential would there be to increase that in 2026, given where the share price is [indiscernible] given the kind of existing authority that you have got, if that's something you think would be on your agenda to bring on a board?

First question, yes, indeed. Eastern European used to grow double digit. The market was really booming. It suddenly decelerated vigorously and moving from a plus 12% to plus 2%, plus 3%. There's also interesting competitive environment, which has changed. If you look at a country like Poland, 100% of the growth is coming through Korean brands and not really big Korean brands, but Korean brands are there for 6 months and then replaced by others. So all of us, all the global brands are suffering from that.

What also worsened the situation are a few customer issues that we have been able to solve. So that's something where we should have a positive momentum in 2026. But the key question is, and this is where obviously rebalancing the portfolio for us is to be sure that we are not only investing on Epicelline and Thiamidol, but we have also a strong action on deodorants. This is by far our biggest market in Eastern Europe. So that's what we are doing right now.

And I mentioned the example of Romania, for example, where we reached our best ever market share in deo. That's something which is giving us some hope. On your question about share buyback, we just closed, the second time we did share buyback. So you have to allow us to discuss with the Supervisory Board at the end of the year what we want to do. What is essential? You remember that in terms of priority, we know that we have too much cash available and the priority should and will continue to be M&A.

The next question would be from Guillaume Delmas from UBS.

Two questions for me, please. The first one on the 2025 revised outlook. I mean, still trying to reconcile this updated guidance of around 2.5% for Consumer. That seems to imply a little bit more than 4% organic sales growth in Q4, but you also had that very strong momentum of NIVEA in September, growing nearly 8%. So why -- wondering why you would expect such a sequential slowdown between September and the fourth quarter?

And then my second question, it's on the changes you are making to your strategy, particularly that stronger support behind more skin care categories and deo. I mean, I guess, first, when do you think we should start seeing some benefits from this? I mean, could it be immediate? Or is it more of a slow burn? And secondly, given that your margin guidance for the year for 2025 for Consumer is unchanged, would it be fair to assume that at this stage, it's much more about reallocation of resources rather than an overall increase in your marketing budget?

Guillaume, on your first question, you should not forget that, obviously, when you launch a new -- I mean, the biggest launch ever on Epicelline and NIVEA plus a range of 6 or 7 SKUs of deo in September, you cannot continue the same momentum for the next 3 months. So you will have -- the pipeline effect will be, I would say, September, October. And then you have the sellout. So this is why we have indeed planned the growth with the full success of those launches, but a core business, which will not improve dramatically. So that's the assumption of the Q4. This is why we wanted to come with a more realistic assumption for Q4, which is, by the way, consistent with what all of you thought.

On the rebalancing, no, I mean, the reason why we came with Q2 and we decided to change the guidance on EBIT moving from plus 50 basis points to plus 20 basis points is simply because we knew that those big launches were coming in Q4, and we knew that it would have been a shame not to support them just because we wanted to deliver in a kind of dogmatic way the first guidance we gave on EBIT.

So the 20 basis points that we -- the 30 basis points that we decided to allocate to marketing budget are exactly the money we're going to spend in Q4, and we have the biggest ever spending on the face care launch on NIVEA and the biggest ever spending on the deo launch on NIVEA on top of, of course, continuing to support the launch of all the launches and the activity of Derma and the bigger mission in China with 11/11. So no change in the media strategy, just using the 30 basis points that we freed in the Q2 to support those big launches in the weeks to come.

The next question is from like Ulrike Dauer from Dow Jones.

I hope you can hear me. I don't have much of a voice today. Sorry. I'd like to ask a question about the U.S. import tariffs after the failed tariff deal between Switzerland and U.S., the import tariffs are now 39%, which are affecting La Prairie. And I was just wondering, will you be able to pass on the additional cost to customers? How much more expensive will be even already expensive products deal? And is that still not enough for a strategy change? Or do you consider maybe producing more in the U.S. now like many other companies more or less voluntarily are planning to do? Also, the overall import tariff exposure, you said that a lot of the products for the U.S. market are produced in Mexico or other countries. Can you quantify additional costs related to those new import tariffs by quarter, by full year? Is there any additional information you might be able to provide? I have some other question about Kering. Maybe you can answer that question later.

Your question about La Prairie. So yes, indeed, the Swiss government has not yet been able to negotiate a reduced tax level tariff increase with the U.S. So we have indeed this extremely difficult situation. We have been, of course, anticipating the change of service. So we are covered, I would say, in terms of stocks in the U.S. For the time being, we are waiting -- wait and see in a way. We do not believe today that it will be wise to implement immediately the tariff increase on the La Prairie prices, which, as you mentioned, are already very high.

You imagine that in percentage is high, but in absolute value, it's extremely high for La Prairie. So we are not planning to do that. You can imagine that we have anyway a gross margin, which is pretty comfortable on La Prairie. We will see the way other competitors are acting. What is absolutely out of the question is to produce in the U.S. because the strength of La Prairie is made in Switzerland. That's the story of the brand. So we'll absolutely not produce in the U.S. We'll continue to produce in Switzerland.

On your second question, you rightly mentioned that we are in a way, lucky because we have one -- a big part of the production that we are selling in the U.S. is produced in the U.S. and the other big part is in Mexico, where there was no additional tariffs. So we have today an economic equation, which is pretty good for our business. Yes, we have a few products produced in Europe. So they will be affected by the 15% tariff increase, but it's really a minor, minor part of the range, and we'll be able to absorb that either through small price increases or just by managing value engineering projects. So all in all, yes, La Prairie is an issue, but it's a small part of the business in the U.S. The rest of the range is in a way, protected.

May I ask one more question about the Kering brands that were up for sale. Have you looked at them and considered or don't they really match your portfolio strategy?

Ulrike, we are good in 1 category, which is skin care, skin care, skin care, and we are lucky enough that this is by far the biggest beauty category in the world. We have no expertise in perfume. So it would have been a mistake to enter this field without any expertise, so we did not even look at the project.

And the next question is from Bernadette Hogg of Reuters.

I'm sorry. I was still in mute. So it's a bit of a recap question on the slowdown of the market -- in the emerging markets for skin care. So do you see these factors as temporary? Or is it more structural? And how long do you anticipate it lasting? And what are the major causes of the slowdown?

A clear deceleration. We used to have an emerging markets, skin care growing double digit. We end up to a level which is close to low single digit, even negative in some countries. There are a few phenomenons which are taking place. Obviously, Latin America is hit by the -- not only the political uncertainties, but also all the discussions about U.S. tariffs, not U.S. tariffs and Mexico is a country where obviously, we -- the market was suffering with that.

We see in other countries, the development of simplified routines. People -- this is what they call the skinimalism trend where people are buying less product and some of that cheaper. So the only solution, and this is what we are doing pretty successfully with Derma is to come with innovation. In fact, the worst market dynamics in emerging market is the derma market, and we are growing extremely high with double-digit growth in each and every market. We gained market share everywhere. So the recipe that we have been using successfully with Eucerin, we are using it now with NIVEA with also some changes and some rebalancing.

For example, I mentioned already the fact that we -- it's the first time we are launching the same global product Epicelline with 2 different packaging proposal, so one allowing us to sell it at below EUR 22 in emerging markets, and that's much cheaper than the EUR 29 we have in Europe. We are also putting a lot of focus on products like NIVEA Soft in India, which is a fantastic accessible product, but also Facial in Brazil, which has a 30% market share in skin care.

We are rebalancing our investment also on deo. I mentioned Derma Control, which is a global launch that we are launching everywhere. So we are not optimistic on the development of the emerging market dynamics. We'll see what happens. But clearly, we are coming with a much stronger innovation portfolio and -- I would say, much more -- much better adapted launch portfolio to emerging markets. So we hope to see some good figures in the months to come.

The next question is from Anna Westkämper of Handelsblatt.

I have 2 questions regarding tesa. First of all, how dependent are you on the recovery of the automotive sector here? And second of all, are you looking into expanding into other industries like defense with tesa?

Thank you so much, Anna, for your questions. So look, automotive is a big part of the tesa business. Between automotive and electronics, they're really the pillars of what tesa has established. The nice thing about tesa is that they continue to make progress in each of the industries, in automotive as well. So while the market certainly was challenged in Europe and North America, the projects it gained, particularly in Asia Pacific, have really helped kind of balance that impact. so again, not an easy market and certainly not a huge growth driver for tesa year-to-date, but 1 that is also not a huge drag, which is very, very helpful.

And yes, tesa has really invested if you followed some of our commentary also in previous calls. They've really invested over the last few years significantly into innovation and business development, and that is really to go beyond these 2 industries as well and significantly drive more business in other industries.

And the next question is from Olivier Nicolai of Goldman Sachs.

Just very 2 quick follow-ups. First, on NIVEA Epicelline, you obviously have it in Europe and a few other countries. But are you planning to roll this brand out across your whole geographic footprint in next year? And then secondly, on tesa, just a quick follow-up. In the context of obviously what we just discussed about the automotive market, should we expect most of the growth for tesa for next year to come from Electronics?

Thanks for your question. Yes, absolutely, NIVEA Epicelline will be launched and is launched absolutely everywhere. So obviously, not yet in China because we are focusing all our energies in Thiamidol. But this is -- the objective is to launch it in most of our NIVEA countries in the next 6 months. We have already covered Europe. We are starting now in Q4 to launch it in some emerging markets, but this is clearly a very big priority for NIVEA globally. On tesa, Astrid?

Yes. Thank you for your question on tesa. Look, we -- the tesa business absolutely wants to continue to grow in electronics. As you know, a lot of the Electronics business is a project business. So we need to win projects every single year, for example, also with the big device manufacturer. So absolutely, we continue to look for growth in the electronics business as well.

Next question is from Mikheil Omanadze from BNP Paribas.

The first one would be on NIVEA. So if September was so strong, it would imply quite a sluggish delivery in July, August. Would you please be able to provide some color by categories within NIVEA, which were particularly weak in July, August? And my second question is on Chantecaille and Coppertone. How did both brands do in Q3?

On your question about the NIVEA, yes, July, August was well low also because, obviously, we had 0 launches at the time. We had also no effect on any price increase. So we did a minus single digit, I think, on NIVEA, if I remember well, on July, August, compensated by the figures of September, I was just sharing. You have also to keep in mind that's important also to mention that, that the Chinese relaunch has changed -- has obviously impacted strongly the development of NIVEA. If you look at the first 9 months, if we didn't have that this revamping of the Chinese business, NIVEA will be growing plus 1.3%. So that's also something which obviously we decided to do. We are hoping at the time to have a better NIVEA business, but it has obviously impacted the situation. The second question, Mikheil was?

It was on Coppertone, Chantecaille.

Coppertone, Chantecaille, yes. Coppertone, the only good news on Coppertone is that we finally found our way. We clearly have tried a lot of things with Coppertone, trying to launch in face care, trying to launch in spray, trying to develop the brand in a lot of directions. If you know a little bit the U.S. market, we have refocused on sport. We took a very famous rugby -- female rugby player. We are gaining market share on sport. It's not enough to compensate the loss of the rest of the categories. But at least we will continue to support that. We'll focus all our investment on sport, which is the legacy, the origin of the brand and try to gain market share in this category.

Chantecaille, we had a very good first semester with also the launch of China, which impacted the figures. Q3 was a little bit more difficult because we suffered from the slow development of the U.S. luxury market, and we are very dependent on the luxury market. And we have not yet been able to open the stores we wanted to open. They are more coming in the fourth quarter and the first quarter. So all in all, we grow at 7%, 6.8%, which is good, but I was hoping to do better. And we'll see really the way the Chinese business, but also the Indian market, and we are launching in India will also complement hopefully, a better U.S. business in the months to come.

And then we have Tom Sykes next in line.

Just, I guess, some -- a couple of follow-ups on questions already been asked. But in terms of the rollout or level of innovation in full year '26, excluding the sort of country rollouts of Epicelline, then what's the level of that in full year '26 compared to '25? Because you obviously had theoretically a large upgrade of many products in NIVEA? And how would you view that being phased H1 versus H2? And just on pricing, I don't know whether you've given the -- I don't think you've given the commentary on sort of pricing versus volume at all at the moment. But any view on commentary you can give on that? And to what degree do you need to push price to maintain gross margins given that FX has moved from where we were, please?

Tom, on the rollout, yes, absolutely. We have a better launch plan for next year, better in 2 directions. First, balance between H1 and H2. I mean, one of the difficulties that we had this year was the fact that we had almost no launches on NIVEA in the first semester. One of the reasons being that I didn't want to launch NIVEA Epicelline too early after the launch of Eucerin Epicelline. So it has clearly created a first semester with a very low level of innovation.

Next year, we have a big plan in the first semester, where clearly it's really 50-50 in terms of new launches, H1 versus H2. The second difference also it's also a wider plan in the sense that most of the initiatives in 2025 were in face care and Derma Control deo at the end of the year. We have next year some very good launches on body, on deo, on lip, on sun care. And on face care, which is interesting, not only the, I would say, the usual suspects, the premium product, Epicelline and Thiamidol, but also a very big ambition also on some more accessible offer, NIVEA Q10, NIVEA Soft, facial in Brazil in order to be sure that also in face care, we maintain this good value for money dimension.

On pricing, I always say that the objective is clearly to have a dynamic which is more 2/3 volume, 1/3 price. What I find interesting in the third quarter is, in fact, this is a quarter which is purely driven by volumes. And this is the first time because obviously, the price effect was in Q1 and Q2, which I find interesting because it proved that this is one of the best performance in volume we had since a lot of quarter. We are able to regain this volume growth and also to recruit new consumers. So next year, will be surgical. We'll not do price increase over the board. We'll be surgical. We'll do it only when we are obliged indeed to do it because we want to protect the gross margin.

And we are also willing to be much more demanding in terms of cost of goods increase. We are challenging our suppliers. We are moving also from a high dependency on single sourcing to a much better multi-sourcing in order to make some negotiation on the cost of goods. And we'll show that we do price increase where we have to protect the gross margin and/or where we are coming with an innovation or innovation was a true added value in the eyes of retailers, but also in the eyes of consumers. So the level of price increase will be strongly, dramatically below the one we had in the years before.

And it looks like we have one follow-up question from Celine.

What China did in the third quarter, it seems that it was negative for NIVEA. But overall, if you can talk about how comfortable you feel about the reacceleration in the fourth quarter? And if you could comment as well on La Prairie.

I must say, Celine, I feel well with China. Let me start with the absolutely obvious success. We have Eucerin, which is growing 83% in Northeast Asia, which means that we are growing 150% in China. We have the anti-pigment serum of Eucerin, which is today the #1 anti-pigment serum in China. So we are beating not only the global competitors, but also local competitors. And the first 11/11 figures, so it's only 30% of the time, but we are growing in sell-out by 83% versus last year. So pretty, pretty happy with Eucerin. We have a great story. We have this unique ingredient, which is exactly what you need to succeed in China. So more to come, but an outstanding performance in 2025 and 2026.

The second element, which is making us optimistic is La Prairie. I mentioned the fact that we are growing in net sales by 3%. But if you look at sellout, we are growing at 10% and with e-commerce growing at 30%, and that's really something that we did not experience in China since a long time. So La Prairie, good dynamics, compensating -- more than compensating the difficulty of Hainan, which was always small for us. I think the job which has been done by the new CEO and the team is starting to pay off. And the fact that we discovered late, but clearly, with a great execution, e-commerce is doing well.

Last but not least, NIVEA, this is a question. What I can tell you that when you look at the face care business over the last quarter, we have been growing step by step. If you look at sellout quarter 2 plus 18%, quarter 3 plus 36%. Again, if I look at my 11/11 first figures, again, 30% of the time, we are growing plus 30%. I also believe that this Thiamidol story with, of course, a better price is an asset for NIVEA. And again, we are also using Eucerin to make some -- to create some awareness on Thiamidol. So I would not open champagne, but I think when I look at the 3 major brands in China, we have pretty good signals and more to come in Q4, which will be extremely strong for China.

Thank you. That was the last question. This concludes our conference call. Beiersdorf's next Investor Relations event will be the release of our full year results on March 3, 2026. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf and look forward to seeing you back here again in the new year. Thank you very much.

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